And that's a contradiction.
The rules say Lantern Archons can do that. Someone wants to do it. You say they can't.
You have now deviated from RAW and are house ruling.
If you don't do that, you now have to come up with an explanation as to why this very simple rule wasn't taken advantage of in the past 10,000 years to provide lots of free light to people...if you want to be logically consistent in a game.
Otherwise you are Rule 0'ing again, by ignoring the rules in a polite gentlemen's agreement not to break the game.
(shrugs). That's how it works. And this contradiction of what can be done and is blatantly ignored is why world building is difficult. Golarion, for instance, does NOT reflect what the rules allow...it basically has campaign wide Rules 0 going on ALL THE TIME.
And this is the core world. So...yeah, there's heaps of contradictions going on here.
==Aelryinth
Why are we slavishly trying to hang onto what RAW says when this is clearly a house rule situation? Did I miss the section in the book where they talk about technological explosions?
Shrugging helplessly and saying "Well, this is RAW" isn't helpful. It doesn't do anything for the conversation.
The rules are a tool box and nothing more. They are hammers, saws, screwdrivers and so on. Just because the rule exists doesn't mean that a GM or table needs to use it. You CAN hammer with a screwdriver and you CAN hammer in a screw; neither works very well.
Nothing in the OP requires that this discussion only use the RAW and not take into account GM preferences, design, or the dreaded house rule. RAW does not cover what we are talking about. We're moving past that now and into world design, which often requires changing and modifying rules.
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Saying the RAW is 'my interpretation' of the rules is shooting a cannon at a blank field...it's no such thing, and comes across that you're blaming me for the rules saying what they do, and ignoring the rules is what everyone should do as the new standard, so then nobody knows what anybody is talking about because there is no standard.
Meh!
==Aelryinth
The rules don't say anything... they are just letters on a text. Whenever anyone, you, me, James Jacobs, speaks about rules, by necessity they are interpreting the meaning of those words by how they, you, and I process language. The observer can not be separated from that she observes.
My stating this is not an attack on you. It should be taken for what it is... an acknowledgement of what goes on when we process language which is always a partly subjective process.
Why are we slavishly trying to hang onto what RAW says when this is clearly a house rule situation? Did I miss the section in the book where they talk about technological explosions?
Shrugging helplessly and saying "Well, this is RAW" isn't helpful. It doesn't do anything for the conversation.
The rules are a tool box and nothing more. They are hammers, saws, screwdrivers and so on. Just because the rule exists doesn't mean that a GM or table needs to use it. You CAN hammer with a screwdriver and you CAN hammer in a screw; neither works very well.
Nothing in the OP requires that this discussion only use the RAW and not take into account GM preferences, design, or the dreaded house rule. RAW does not cover what we are talking about. We're moving past that now and into world design, which often requires changing and modifying rules.
When Have I ever said you can't deviate from RAW? I do so myself!
THE OP wanted a solution that didn't involve tons of blatant house-ruling. The fact is, you can't do it without house-ruling, be it blatant or gentlemen's agreement. But you also have to be aware of what the RAW says, so that you know WHAT you have to look out for/houserule differently.
But it's not my place to argue better/worse houserules. I've just stuck to noting what the RAW is, and if you want to deviate from it, then compensate for it.
==Aelryinth
Saying the RAW is 'my interpretation' of the rules is shooting a cannon at a blank field...it's no such thing, and comes across that you're blaming me for the rules saying what they do, and ignoring the rules is what everyone should do as the new standard, so then nobody knows what anybody is talking about because there is no standard.
Meh!
==Aelryinth
The rules don't say anything... they are just letters on a text. Whenever anyone, you, me, James Jacobs, speaks about rules, by necessity they are interpreting the meaning of those words by how they, you, and I process language. The observer can not be separated from that she observes.
My stating this is not an attack on you. It should be taken for what it is... an acknowledgement of what goes on when we process language which is always a partly subjective process.
I disagree, to an extent - the Rules are the standard and lens by which we observe the game. Without them, we don't know what we are deviating from, and all we have is a mess.
I think it's more about me being a convenient target for ire against the rules, since getting angry at the rules themselves isn't going to do much. :)
It's also about standards of behavior and intent - arguing that because something is possible and just isn't done 'because', is effectively a Rule 0 gentlemen's agreement, not an 'Aelryinth's interpretation is not RAW.' I.e. ignoring a bad rule doesn't mean it doesn't exist...you're just nerfing it, NOT that I'm 'interpreting things as a House Rule' as a convenient means of denying that the GM is the one actually doing the Rule 0.
==Aelryinth
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Saying the RAW is 'my interpretation' of the rules is shooting a cannon at a blank field...it's no such thing, and comes across that you're blaming me for the rules saying what they do, and ignoring the rules is what everyone should do as the new standard, so then nobody knows what anybody is talking about because there is no standard.
Meh!
==Aelryinth
The rules don't say anything... they are just letters on a text. Whenever anyone, you, me, James Jacobs, speaks about rules, by necessity they are interpreting the meaning of those words by how they, you, and I process language. The observer can not be separated from that she observes.
My stating this is not an attack on you. It should be taken for what it is... an acknowledgement of what goes on when we process language which is always a partly subjective process.
I disagree, to an extent - the Rules are the standard and lens by which we observe the game. Without them, we don't know what we are deviating from, and all we have is a mess.
I think it's more about me being a convenient target for ire against the rules, since getting angry at the rules themselves isn't going to do much. :)
It's also about standards of behavior and intent - arguing that because something is possible and just isn't done 'because', is effectively a Rule 0 gentlemen's agreement, not an 'Aelryinth's interpretation is not RAW.' I.e. ignoring a bad rule doesn't mean it doesn't exist...you're just nerfing it, NOT that I'm 'interpreting things as a House Rule' as a convenient means of denying that the GM is the one actually doing the Rule 0.
==Aelryinth
The rules are one of our handles of the game. But I think you're extrapolating too much of what the game covers. The game mechanics are primarily aimed at war-gaming combat as first priority, PC-NPC interaction as second priority, and World-Building mechanics a fairly distant third. You seen looking for the rules to give the same consistency to granular world simulation that they do to combat, that's never happened in the game's prior incarnations, and that's never going to happen in Pathfinder, because it simply can not be done in this ruleset.
Why are we slavishly trying to hang onto what RAW says when this is clearly a house rule situation? Did I miss the section in the book where they talk about technological explosions?
Shrugging helplessly and saying "Well, this is RAW" isn't helpful. It doesn't do anything for the conversation.
The rules are a tool box and nothing more. They are hammers, saws, screwdrivers and so on. Just because the rule exists doesn't mean that a GM or table needs to use it. You CAN hammer with a screwdriver and you CAN hammer in a screw; neither works very well.
Nothing in the OP requires that this discussion only use the RAW and not take into account GM preferences, design, or the dreaded house rule. RAW does not cover what we are talking about. We're moving past that now and into world design, which often requires changing and modifying rules.
When Have I ever said you can't deviate from RAW? I do so myself!
THE OP wanted a solution that didn't involve tons of blatant house-ruling. The fact is, you can't do it without house-ruling, be it blatant or gentlemen's agreement. But you also have to be aware of what the RAW says, so that you know WHAT you have to look out for/houserule differently.
But it's not my place to argue better/worse houserules. I've just stuck to noting what the RAW is, and if you want to deviate from it, then compensate for it.
==Aelryinth
We've acknowledged what the book said and moved past it. What you are seeing as being mad at the rules but taking it out on you might be because you continue to hammer on the same topic over and over again with a shrug and "It's RAW, what can you do?"
We know RAW. Thank you for reiterating it. The discussion has gotten sidetracked with debating with you about why we're moving on instead of saying "Oh poo, those darn rules!"
Except the behavior of those in the world, save for the effects of things like fear spells, in not in the provenance of the rules, but instead of the GM. And if those peasants don't want to cooperate with your mass social engineering project, they don't want to go cooperate, whatever you may think the rules 'dictate'.Use kingdom building to amass a small nation then have people geas'd into learning basic magic :P
While I realize you're being facetious, for the sake of those who honestly believe such a stunt would work:
And thus you can, theoretically force people to retrain to be wizards... or generally enslave the population, with enough time, money and complicit NPCs - which as the GM controls them, requires the GM to choose to do as you ask.
But geas has no duration and is not dismissable, so they continue to be forced to follow the magical command given at the time of casting, regardless of what later happens in their lifetime, meaning each casting needs to be custom tailored to your nations needs, as people are locked into that pattern of behavior unless you remove their geas, which can only be done with a caster level 2 higher - which would require a metropolis.
And in any case: Congratulations - you've trained thousands of L1 Int 10 wizards. As I've argued in the past... what, precisely, does this achieve for the nation? Aelyrinth's long list of "benefits" was mostly predicated on some very rubbery interpretations of spell descriptions, not their actual published rules. At best, people can cast mage hand and prestidigitation at will... vaguely beneficial? Yes. The backbone of magitech revolution and and renaissance? Hardly.
===End what should be a completely unnecessary explanation===
In opposition: using rule 0 is houseruling, so you're talking out of both sides of your mouth here.
No, Aelyrinth, it's not. The world is left to the GM to define: NPCs not only do not gain XP except by GM Fiat, they do not exist without it, nor does the universe in which your thought experiment takes place as there is no game without the GM.
Rule 0 is the foundation upon which everything is built. Your thought experiment into "What if we metagamed with the NPCs as if they were all PCs" is... well... redundant to begin with, and not as convincing as you think it is, as most of your arguments are predicated on a bunch of assumptions that even the RAW doesn't actually support.
Also in RAW: Where does it state how many people or how much land is needed to grow food for the population? Nowhere. So where does the food come from? "Farmers". But how many do we really need? Can everyone just move into the cities to capitalize on the +12 to +200 Productivity (if using Ultimate Campaign) for truly luxurious lifestyles? Gone are the poor, and everyone is in middle or upper class living, and able to afford spellcasting services for private use, or continual flame torches for their houses. And with the leisured middle class the industrial revolution cometh.
Compared to that 1 skill rank, being a 1st level wizard does squat.
So, I'm holding to standards of the boards here, you're not, and you're attempting to blame me for it. It's REALLY annoying.
You have a strong tendency to deliver an argument and then steadfastly dismiss or ignore any counterpoints, rendering it impossible to have a discussion with you as you refuse to question core assumptions which are, frankly, faulty.
Furthermore, most of your recent posts are not adding any new ideas are arguments - you're just repeating the same things you've been saying for near a dozen pages, which aren't actually helpful, but instead focused on explaining how the RAW can theoretically (and it entirely theory) be used to "break" the game world's status quo.
The broken-record effect, combined with an abrasive writing style and steadfast refusal to even try to consider other's opinions/arguments is really, really irritating. I wasn't surprised by Wyrm's earlier post - though I'd personally recommend toning it back, or doing what I try to do: Try to ignore you.
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Work done, so Wall-of-Text time.
Regarding RAW, magic and economy within Pathfinder
First off, the rules are silent on how NPCs behave, regardless of what they can and can't do, what they WILL do is left entirely in the GM's hands. Thought exercises based on "but if everyone did X" are simply conjecture, and depending on what X is often not remotely realistic. For example: Yes, we could have world peace, equality, an end to hunger and disease and have colonized other planets by now "if only everyone" put the long term survival and wellbeing of the species ahead of their own, but cool as that idea is, it ain't happening because that's not how people behave.
It is crucial to address the above in any act of world-building (which is the crux of the actual point of this thread): People need to either behave in a manner consistent with how we expect real people to behave, or the writer needs to explain why they don't. Example: Star Trek is/was an example of the latter, as the premise of the Federation is that after WW3 the human race went through a cultural revolution where they put aside greed and personal property and dedicated themselves to self-improvement.... I personally find it somewhat unconvincing, but I'm a bit of a cynic.
Accepting that the "rules" are silent on NPC behavior, we then broaden our sights and find they are equally silent on an incredible array of very necessary things, from food production and land use to reproduction. It doesn't take much to quickly ascertain that the Pathfinder ruleset is, in fact, not a world simulation tool as it doesn't even cover the most basic fundamentals of such, and so any attempts to use them for that purpose are going to be a waste of time and effort and produce unreasonable results. The pathfinder rules are written first and foremost to make playing heroes and fighting dragons fun, not for a simulation of medieval/fantasy world life (realistic or otherwise).
QED: There is a vast portion if the game which is not covered by the ruleset, but instead is the purview of the GM and content authors, and world-building is one of them. While thought exercises can be undertaken to play with the "Adventure Rules" applied out of context, there is no inevitability of such scenarios as the Adventure Rules cannot produce a viable world-state on their own, and thus they typically remain exclusively theoretical, and mostly useless.
Moving on to the topics of "what if" and magic: Generally speaking, the magic system in Pathfinder is there to kill things or help get adventurers through a dungeon, with extremely little of it having any more practical use to the average citizen that an uzi. It is possible to use the spell creation guidelines to create homebrew spells that could revolutionize society when applied on mass... But such things are homebrew narrative devices to justify the desired world one is trying to build and not actually inherent to Pathfinder or it's Rules As Written.
One of the most discussed scenarios is: What if everyone was a first level caster? ...well okay, that's not exactly true, what has been discussed mostly is "but everyone COULD be a 1st level caster", rather than what such an expensive and exhaustive education does for people, though a little bit of this was started earlier.
Immediately what comes to mind is that bard is vastly superior to wizard: Healing spells and the most useful of the arcane spells (unseen servant) is excellent, while also having better saves, better skills and better hitpoints. Life is better as a bard, given that the wizards superior casting at higher levels is irrelevant, and they suffer from needing a spellbook (very costly and easily lost/damaged). Most people have a 10 or 11 in the requisite mental stat, so at best they can fire off a couple of first level spells (1-2 hours of crappy labor) and at worst have unlimited prestidigitation and can keep things clean. Cool.
But is it worth the equivalent of 20 months gross income for the average peasant? Would said peasant use freely given resources for education, or sell them off and enjoy the windfall? Would they agree to borrow that amount for training, knowing they were incurring a debt equal to twice that amount, due very soon? COULD said peasant actually repay the loan with interest? To answer that question we need to look at what magic does for the common man's purse... And the answer is... Not much.
Putting aside Spellcasting services (which are a "thing you can buy" and not something that can be sold per the rules... And using it on mass is nonsensical), the best outcome is to have a character put their human racial bonus into their casting stat to get a 12, then have 2 hours of unseen servant per day to assist in crafting items - except it is mindless (int -) and should arguably has a -5 to the check, and cannot get above a DC 10 - which amounts to at best a +2 for 25% of your worktime, or an average of +0.5 to the weekly check to generate income... Or about 5 copper a day, on top of a baseline of 1gp a day without spellcasting ~ about a 5% rise. Is it useful? Yes. But it'll take about 5 years to recoup the investment costs, or 10 years to repay the loan. That's not enough financial incentive to be compelling to the average citizen, who is more concerned about making ends meet now, and ultimately doesn't really have a big enough impact on the world to be "inevitable".
Eberron's approach was to have dragonmarks be a predictable and hereditary ability to manifest magic - those marked were essentially chosen by fate, and their abilities centered around a theme, allowing the families to focus on a specific role within society. This works, albeit through intervention of "prophecy", because it plays upon established and 'normal' human behavior, rather than against it, and combines that with a lot of "and these uber magic items are possible with dragonmarks 'because'".
The point being: Without a massive amount of worldbuilding / "homebrew content" prolific access to first level spells really doesn't DO that much for the economy or society at large, making it an impractical investment at best, or ludicrous theorycrafting at worst. And if you're willing to use GM/Author authority to MAKE it happen, then it is surely equally valid to not do so, yes?
NB: I know I've raised this point before, but generally the responses have been one-liners about spell X or Y with no actual substance / numbers to even attempt to justify why such a tactic is viable. I'm happy to be proven wrong - but I ask that some effort be put into it, rather than just bandy about references to simulacrum or such.
Unseen Servant is about the worst example you could use of a money earning spell here. Short duration, weak, stupid, no skills. Ugh.
You want to leverage the power of unlimited casting. You want to use cantrips.
Prestidigitation is the go to spell, simply because it is a massive time saver.
It can clean a room or your dishes instantly, do the laundry, mend normal clothing, help with the cooking, warm/cool food...and do so in exactly six seconds.
Massive time saver. Allows you to double the amount of work you do a day. It would be a superior and more efficient way of stripping grain from stalks, tying up bundles of them, and the like.
Peasants who can do more are more productive. Even being able to work an extra 4 hours a day because you don't have to do the routine stuff is a 50% increase in income, and that's without leveraging what spells might actually be able to do. The simple implications of being able to keep everything clean all the time for long term hygiene and health would be striking. Even having 'infinite ammo' and a touch attack for hunting with cantrips for birds and rabbits could be VERY significant.
As for payment...have them teach the NEXT peasant. Bing, the money goes out in one pocket and into the other, essentially being paid forwards. Only when the very last peasant can find nobody to teach is the money important...and a PC or NPC could step forwards and pay that piddling amount for them once the project is done.
Remember that while you might have to pay another spellcaster to cast a spell, if they are willing to do it voluntarily, most spells have no actual cost at all. So peasants who are willing to teach their peers for next to nothing can also turn the system on its head, in effect swapping services instead of coin.
As for bards having the better spell list...remember, spon casters know VERY few spells at low level. You can have a communal spell book for a family, and spells can be swapped between families in lieu of paying each other the same fee. They won't be 'lost easily' if everyone and their brother has a spellbook. I can certainly see bardic magic being used by those with a high Charisma score, however, and the skill points are probably better then a bloodline power and familiar, all things considered.
And also note that the aging rules allow people to up their mental stats as they get older. So, these peasants will actually get better at casting simply as they age.
==Aelryinth
Stuff
Prestidigitation works with the craft/profession check. You have time now to craft and profess that you did not before.
Are you going to say something like "She got her laundry done in six seconds as opposed to three hours, and just sat around and did nothing?"So, you're making Time, and that works with the rules. I explicitly mentioned 'six seconds' so you'd compare it with the time it takes to clean an entire house, do all the laundry, heat/cool food down, and the like.
A survival check lets you find enough food for yourself, sure. Having a weapon always on hand that hits more then any missile weapon lets you be more successful at hunting. Does your hunter with no weapon always bring back meat? There's be a circumstance penalty to his check at the least. Does his missile weapon have a touch attack? That should be a circumstance bonus for increased accuracy if you are hunting.
Making that survival check does mean you have to have the right tools for the job. All skill checks assume that. IF you don't have the right tools, you get penalized.
i.e. having a ranged touch attack could easily be the equivalent of a masterwork tool for a survival check, simply because it hits what you are aiming at better.
So, no, I'm not 'making all that up.' I'm applying the rules as they are. And Prestidigitation freeing up time from other tasks that can be bent to more profitable endeavors, and Ray of Frost being a nigh-perfect hunting weapon for Survival checks, is just applying the rules as they are.
==Aelryinth
Something I've always found funny, that spells cost a giant amount, but the caster doesn't get anywhere near the amount given to them because profession checks barely give any gold at all.
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So, no, I'm not 'making all that up.' I'm applying the rules as they are. And Prestidigitation freeing up time from other tasks that can be bent to more profitable endeavors, and Ray of Frost being a nigh-perfect hunting weapon for Survival checks, is just applying the rules as they are.
Let's try this again. One last time. Call it excessive optimism.
I'd ask you to reference the sourcebook and page for how much human manhours are spent per week on tasks that could be done faster with prestidigitation and how many could be converted to gainful work and the pay increase that would result.... but we both know that said rules don't exist. Your description of what prestidigitation would achieve is not per the Rules As Written, it is per your extrapolation of what the magic could do and applied logically with the real world and history as context... which is fine in and of itself - it shows you have imagination - but considering the lynchpin of the argument you have labored ad nauseam is that you are only applying the RAW, and have frequently been highly dismissive of "GM Fiat" solutions to the "technological explosion" dilemma, it is actually extremely hypocritical.
If you want to argue your position that magical revolutions are inevitable per RAW, you need to stick to the Rules As Written. If you want to use GM fiat in your argument, you cannot then discount others doing so in their counterpoints. Pick one.
Specifically: I used unseen servant as it was the only one whose RAW function could be applied to the rules that exist for income and economy. Prestidigitation allows one to perform "minor tricks" but has no explicit function that can be used as you describe, unless the GM so rules it to.
Gathering food from the wild, earning income etc are all skill checks and low level spells (and especially cantrips) give no mechanical benefit to such, and thus have no (or negligible) positive impact on the socioeconomic standing of the individual peasant. Additionally, all prepared spellcasters must dedicate an entire hour of additional "spell prep" time into their daily lives, which as no rules are given to say how much time they could "save" with prestidigitation cannot be hand-waived as offset by any advantages the spells could conceivably give.
Your example of the ray of frost hunter is also very, very misleading. Ray of frost is a close range spell (25ft) with a verbal component, and while it is ranged touch attack, almost everything a commoner 1 or wizard 1 can hunt (without being mauled to death) has a natural armor bonus of +0 to +1, rendering it no better at hitting than a sling. The sling, however, is free, with free ammo that deals the same damage and a range increment of 50ft. Same chance to hit, twice the range without penalty (and options for attacking well beyond that) and the Commoner has Perception as a class skill? Even if the ability to kill things actually applied to food and income in RAW, the commoner is better off as he was.
Furthermore, you are misconstruing the retraining rules:
As for payment...have them teach the NEXT peasant. Bing, the money goes out in one pocket and into the other, essentially being paid forwards. Only when the very last peasant can find nobody to teach is the money important...and a PC or NPC could step forwards and pay that piddling amount for them once the project is done.
I suggest you read the retraining rules more closely.
- 1) (UC pg 188) For retraining options that require a trainer, but where no trainer is available, "the GM might allow you to retrain yourself by spending twice the normal time. Doing so does not double the cost.
2) Retraining class levels specifically nominates what form of trainer you need (for a commoner, it's a 1st level wizard), but then suggests that without a trainer you can still train solo. Whether this is an exception to the above requirement for GM permission is up to interpretation (by the GM, mostly).
3) Regardless of whether they have a trainer or not, retraining a commoner 1 to a wizard 1 costs 30gp. This is not a payment to someone else, it is a cost associated with the training. It is spent upfront and stays spent. You cannot "Recycle" it to another character. It is gone.
4) Retraining occupies your "full" day (preventing any other downtime activities) while training is ongoing, which implies it occupies your tutors as well. GM ruling can go against this, but it implies a one-to-one mentorship.
Or in short: It's questionable at best whether the commoner can train themselves to be a wizard; it will eat a lot of time to train everyone; it is exceedingly expensive to do on mass as the cost cannot just be "passed on" - that is called "cheating".
I'd seriously question your assumptions.
1) Giving up Perception as a class skill is harsh for anyone who goes into the wilderness to gather food. It also makes finding prey harder, as most animals are either stealthy, deadly, or both. Putting aside the issues with the ray of frost hunting idea... If you were going to be a hunter, you should go for Ranger with favored enemy (animals).
2) Generally speaking, farmers want to spend the meagre 2-3 skill points (depending on race) on Handle Animal, Profession (farmer), Perception, Ride or Craft, and have to compromise between. The communal spellbook is an interesting concept, but requires everyone to sink skill points into Spellcraft in order to have a decent chance of actually getting the spells they want.
3) Going further on the communal spellbook, you aren't taking into account that each person needs to each burn an hour a day (which you seem to ignore) preparing spells from the same book, making it hard to get everyone prepared and out into the fields early on a morning as they need to take turns with the book, disrupting work.
4) Spell swapping still carries an additional problem to the above - it costs money to scribe spells into a book. 5gp for a cantrip, 10gp for a 1st level spell. Sure, that's chicken feed for an adventurer, but when a spell costs as much as a cow, it's not so practical an exchange for the average Joe, unless you house ruled a way to drop the cost of scribing spells.
5) Reliance on prepared casters also means that each household has a very portable, extreme value item within that would be a primary target for theft, and practically irreplaceable for the average family due to the cost involved.
6) They're probably better off as rangers, monks or barbarians. Better skills. More skill points. More hp. Better saves. Vastly more capable of defending themselves and so on. But that's just the somewhat obvious statement of "PC classes are better than NPC classes"... And even then it doesn't necessarily justify the retraining expense. A Rolls Royce is a better car than a Ford, but that doesn't mean everyone should buy one.
Circumstance bonuses are part of the game, not Rule 0. They are based on appropriateness to the task at hand. A DM judgement call on when they apply is not the same as saying "That doesn't work." Not having appropriate tools is noted under picking locks as having a -10 penalty. Improvised tools, rather then standard tools, alone impose a -2 penalty, noted in the Craft penalty. So, yes, not having appropriate tools for a Survival check would indeed mean a -2 penalty, if applicable. It's in the rules.
You don't need to memorize cantrips every day, unless you are changing them. So no down time unless you need to memorize first level spells again...and you're only going to memorize those if you've spent them. So, another poor argument. Cantrips are in the rules. And note I've NEVER talked about first level spells. That's you all.
The retraining rules are completely ambiguous on where the 30 gp actually goes for retraining. By your definition, the trainers are working for free, and the 30 gp is spent regardless of whether or not you have a trainer! i.e. the rules make no mention of how someone gets paid for being a trainer, so you are assuming they don't get paid? And it doesn't change the fact that the money is spent somewhere, gets spent again, and gets recycled as it does so.
I prefer to think that if you have a trainer, the money goes to them, and if you don't, the extra expense is for getting all the materials and knowledge the trainer would provide on your own time. That's a judgement call, the rules are silent...but otherwise, trainers don't get paid, which is an inherent contradiction!
The whole idea of being a wizard is not having to be a ranger to be able to sack a rabbit or bird, or carry around a sling and decent rocks for ammunition. Anyone has the weapon, and they have it all the time. If you want to hunt a deer, be a ranger, ray of frost won't kill it. If you want range, use a crossbow! But if you don't want to carry around a weapon all the time, you've still got one you can use as opportunity presents itself. If need be, you can instead use a Magic Missile or Sleep spell or other effect at range if you want to be a serious hunter...still without having to carry around a weapon and ammunition, which means Ray of Frost is useful even to those people with a 4 str.
Perception as a class skill is invaluable for adventurers. For the average soul, not so much. You are overestimating its usefulness in daily life, as opposed to potential combat situations.
Note that both definitions of skills and craft/profession you quoted reference 'tools of the trade.' With cantrips, you can always have the tools on hand or at hand.
You'll need to spend points on Spellcraft to copy spells regardless. Note you can also blow a feat on Spell Mastery to always get certain spells back without needing a spellbook, too...and naturally this restriction is only applicable if you are a wizard. Spon casters have no need to 'study' at all. And as I noted before, you only need to study cantrips if you are going to change them!
Don't forget that if you don't choose an item bond, you can get a familiar. A familiar IS an intelligent being that can share your skill ranks, and thus give +2 on skill checks via Aid Another since it can hit the DC reliably, as opposed to Unseen Servant. Having an intelligent cat to get rid of vermin, etc, is another unspoken side benefit.
Noting that being able to do the laundry in seconds as opposed to all day is not making up a new rule. It's an effect of the spell. You quoted it yourself. Not having to clean things by hand frees up immense amounts of time. Now, FILL THE TIME. That's not a Rule 0 unless you rule that getting laundry done instantly still takes the same amount of time as doing it by hand...which IS a Rule 0/GM Fiat, since it's now contradicting the cantrip.
By your definition, having Fabricate to instantly make something from the raw materials would have no effect on your income, because it isn't mentioned in the craft/profession checks! Yet clearly Craft checks are merely functions of progress in time, seeing how much work is done/hour, a mechanic Fabricate bypasses to arrive right at the end product. The objective is the item crafted, and the time it takes to spend on it is a function of your check, measured in gp.
Prestidigitation is merely a slower and more practical version of Fabricate. Not having to spend time doing laborious chores is time you can spend doing craft/profession checks, or adding people to the workforce who would otherwise be stuck at home. Maybe it gives the women more time to spin wool into thread, or knit, or whatever. Craft checks.
Efficiency in tech does the same thing. Since jobs get done faster, you can do more or different things in the same amount of time. That's the greatest effect of the spell.
Magic weapons are all masterwork tools. If appropriate for the skill, masterwork tools give +2 on a check. So, yes, a magic ranged weapon would give a +2 bonus on Survival checks when hunting for meat, it's right in the rules. Hunting for roots and veggies, not so much, and a magic sword, not so much unless you're hunting something which might fight back, like a bear.
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So, basically, we're at loggerheads over what is Rule 0 and what is not.
You're using a very liberal definition that if it isn't explictly mentioned in the rules, ANYTHING is Rule 0 and GM Fiat. Which naturally supports all your arguments.
I'm drawing lines between judgement calls and the fact certain things are indeed explicitly called out in the rules as GM purview, and Rule 0 is inventing things whole cloth or contradicting existing rules for one reason or another.
This is naturally opposed to many of your arguments, since now Rule 0 doesn't cover all the situations you want it to without actually rewriting the existing rules.
==Aelryinth
Indeed! Where does the money go?
as for the 'twist', you are the ones noting that unless there's a specific example/situation, it's Rule 0.
I'm noting that things like circumstance bonuses are IN THE RULES, and the rules are broader then you are trying to 'line item veto.'
Yeah, they don't cover everything, and yeah, they are often contradictory (just ask Ashiel about assigning CR. Ugh.). But they also cover a lot more then you seem to be giving them credit for.
I will also note that paying a PC to train you and keeping the money in the party (or simply giving it back to you) is exactly in the same spirit as the PC in the party casting spells for you and not demanding that you pay him for the casting.
Now you have to make the rule whether 'training costs' are a payment to the person, or they are 'spell component costs', and burned regardless.
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Your disagreements with me on what constitutes Rule 0 are an interpretation of language, i.e. a pointless English argument at this point.
I'm still firmly of the opinion that the existing rules do NOT support the current game world design, they DO allow for abuse of the 'setting' (note, that's not rules abuse!), and without outright house-ruling some sense into them, a 'magitech explosion' is all but inevitable, and should have already happened.
This isn't going to change, and nicking at fine points of what is and is not houseruling isn't going to change that.
==Aelryinth
What stopped the industrial revolution from occurring prior to when it did. Archeology has shown that a lot of the things that started industrial revolution had been around for long time prior to 1400 AD.
The way I see it is those in power feared knowledge left uncontrolled would threat to their power. A good example of this is Catholic church.
Guild secrets probably did more to hamper the spread of knowledge then anything, although the Churches and nobility were certainly not victimless.
it was called The Renaissance simply because of the amount of knowledge sharing that went on when it happened. Everything changed.
Having Good gods who would actively work to disseminate knowledge via their churches would make such things VERY hard to stop. It is generally Evil that profits most when knowledge is constrained. Too, Chaotics would rebel against the suppression of what people want to know.
==Aelryinth
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Which amuses me horribly, because before this latest twist you were the one that was arguing that worldbuilding and NPC actions had to be strictly RAW or they were Rule 0/GM fiat/house rules.
Now suddenly there's all this GM judgement and discretion going on. All of it necessary to to make the world blow up the way you think it would by RAW, but actually only does if the GM uses their judgement the way you think is proper, but not in any of the ways we've suggested before.
Yep. He's successfully convinced me that Wyrm is, in fact, utterly correct.
By the way, as far as retraining costs go, would you allow one PC to pay those costs to another PC when he wanted to retrain? Assuming the second PC was qualified, of course. Keep the money in the party.
Indeed! Where does the money go?
...the cost cannot just be "passed on" - that is called "cheating".
As mentioned: There is a cost. Arguing that there is no cost because the RAW doesn't explicitly state what the money is used on is either: A) Cheating; or B) A house-rule on Aelyrinth's part.
Either way, I'm taking my wife's advice at this point and not feeding the troll any further.
If anyone wishes to continue an actually meaningful conversation on world-building and the place of magic within (which is an interesting topic) then I'd be glad to do so.
Ah, and since there is no mention of trainers getting paid, they train people for free! Them actually receiving funds for their work would be A) cheating or B) a house-rule on Raynulf's part.
:) Dumb corner interpretation and blame-games go both ways, Raynulf. As I already mentioned, a decision has to be made...is training like your fellow party member casting a buff spell on you, and you not having to pay for it, or like spell components, a cost that can't be avoided?
There are no rules saying which it is.
Of course, you could always house-rule that PC's can't train NPC's or one another, unless they do it for free, and then we don't have a conflict in anywhere but believability. The magic of training only works for PC's if they don't get paid by the people they are training!
Makes great sense.
Your kettle is still as black as ever, so I'd stop throwing around the insults and pointing fingers.
==Aelryinth
None of this matters in the slightest. Are we going back on topic or should we call Chris to lock this?
Uh ... actually, Aelryinth, you decided that my examples of 'judgement calls' were House Rule territory instead of, you know, judgement calls. Nowhere does it say that any particular spell (such as, say, prestidigitation) counts as a 'circumstance bonus'; that's a GM's judgement call - which is Rule #0. Worldbuilding - if there's a farm around the corner - isn't a House Rule, it's worldbuilding, aka a judgement call, Rule #0. If he makes that judgement call the same way all the time, THEN it becomes a house rule - which, sure, is still Rule #0, however you want to write it, but it doesn't make it anything BUT Rule #0, because prestidigitation-as-a-circumstance-bonus is not in the rules.
Magic weapons - or even masterwork weapons - are nowhere in the rules included as 'masterwork tools' for Survival; they apply their masterwork advantage in other ways, and 'as a tool, so +2' is not it. Allowing this is a judgement call, whether as a one-time bonus or house-ruled to always be accessible; that makes it Rule #0.
So, sorry - you can't have it both ways.
Either the GM can make judgement calls on when certain rules apply - whether that's that prestidigitation, a damaging spell, or a masterwork weapon being a bonus of whatever type for any particular skill roll, or that a pig farmer isn't able to be retrained as a wizard - or he can't. If you're allowing Rule #0 for judgement calls, then you have to allow it for all judgement calls, not just the ones you want.
A friend of mine asked me this question a couple of days ago, and so far, I don't have a good answer.
Wikipedia tells us that, in real life, industrial revolution "included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system."
Now, suppose you are a 14-th century England with no magic, and you suddenly got a bunch of wizards(let's say 10 of them, each at lv 12). Just your ordinary wizards without any particularily unusual spells in their spellbooks. What can they do to initiate their own industrial revolution?
Well, for starters, they can just make pure iron. Wall of Iron spell makes a 5ft sq/level , 1/4 inch/level thick wall of, well, iron. That is 16.7 metric tons(5*5 square=25 square feet=2.32sq meters; 3 inch=0.0762 meters;density of iron=7.87 tons/cubic meter; 2.32*0.0762*12*7870=16.7 metric tons) of iron for your average 12 lv wizard, per one cast of the spell. And they can cast 2 of those per day(3 with a high INT score), which brings them to 33.4 tons per day minimum. Internet tells me that british iron production in 1700 was 12,000 metric tonnes a year, or 32 tons per day, so 10 wizards can outproduce a country without even trying much.
Secondly, they can eschew machine tools. Who needs machine tools when you have Fabricate? Transmute all that iron you just made into whatever is made of iron. Pots, nails, I-beams...Sky is the limit, really. And it only takes a minute to turn all that iron you produced with your wall of iron into finished products.
Next, why don't we ruin agricultural sector while we are at it? For example, we can make a tractor. Be it a construct, an actual vehicle with a Wondrous Item for an engine or something else, point is, Wizard can make it happen. And it probably wouldn't cost a stupendous ammount of money to do so. Now your agriculture is incredibly efficient, and you don't even have to waste money on gas.
Did I already mention a Wondrous item in place of the engine? I am pretty sure that there are a thousand ways to make Perpetuum Mobile with magic for less than 10000 gold. Make a permanent shocking grasp spell to get a perfect electricity generator for example, it will cost you ~1k gold. Same with more "mechanical" powersources.
I might well be missing some other potential exploits, but the general idea is clear-if you just add Wizards into a medievil setting, things aren't going to stay the same for long. Something is going to change radically, to the point where you won't be able to recognise the world.
Now, suppose you wanted to keep the tech level stable, AND have wizards. For that, you would need some counterbalance to magic, something that would slow down the progress of society back to normal levels. What do you think that might be?
Going back to the original topic (posted above for ease of reference), this thread began and for a time ran as a discussion on worldbuilding and the application of magic. The RAW debacle debate is an 8-page sidetrack that is primarily one person arguing with a half-dozen. Ignoring that for the time being, and looking at some of the points raised:
"Just your ordinary wizards"...when they are level 12.
This is one of those background details people forget because NPCs tend to get leveled to whatever makes them relevant to the moment... most people are level 1 to level 3 commoners.
The key reason why mages don't take off on a revolution? Cause there are barely any of them with anything more than level 2 spells. And I would call that a 'bachelor's degree'. For a 'master's degree', I would say they would be level 5 when they have access to the various crafting feats.
Simply put- why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles. And that alone would be enough that they would be able to live in a mansion with servants compared to the normal person. Getting to level 5 gives you a fairly comfortable lifestyle- the vast majority would stop there.
So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'. Oh, sure- you have a few running about, making flying cities. But those are viewed as rare geniuses. Never enough of a population to do much more than make a few marvels here and there. Nothing to massively change the quality of life on a large scale.
The primary difference between magic and technology is that magic is much more focused on internal mastery, rather than the practice of using external forces that have consistent cause and effect. With cars, anyone can do basic upkeep and repairs with a bit of practice. You need high level education in order to repair a +1 sword, since it needs internal processes and such that grant mastery over the arcane forces involved.
This is an excellent (if verbose - a sin I am also guilty of) argument, as while high level casters can do impressive things (even if the wall of iron discussion was moot due to the spell specifically not permitting industrial abuse), they are incredibly rare, and usually (like PCs) much of their time will be dedicated to their own schemes/adventures/whatever: Being a high level wizard makes them brilliant, yes, but not necessarily entrepreneurial. Not everyone is Sir Richard Branson.
Indeed, if we hearken back to 3.5 (as it had rules/guidelines for numbers and levels of NPCs, upon which the spellcasting services were based), and use their numbers (including classification of settlements), we get about 15,268 (combined) sorcerers and wizards in the Inner Sea, out of a crudely estimated 67 million. Or about 0.0023% of the population, with more than half only 1st level. Lumping all casters together (including rangers and paladins) the numbers work out around 63,000 (about 0.094% of population).
Yes... I did just tally up the urban populations and number of settlements of each type from the Inner Sea World Guide and apply some rough estimates for each nation for rural population. Then put together a spreadsheet with the 3.5 DMG rules to work out the numbers and levels of different classes in the world.
Looking at 12th level and above sorcerers and wizards specifically: If the 3.5 DMG was used, there'd be around 400 of them across the entire Inner Sea, with an average of about 10 per nation (i.e. 5 of each). Give or take.
On one hand, that's an impressive number. On the other hand, for every one such caster there are over 330,000 other people. That's reasonably rare.
This one's easy: Wizards have better things to do.
You could argue that Einstein (or Edison or Franklin or DaVinci) could have used their genius to industrialize (or perhaps in Einstein's case, vastly improve industrialization) for the sake of churning out super machines and making vast products using their genius to mass produce cool stuff. In fact, I think they were smart enough to do that very thing.
But they didn't want to. They had better things to do.
So these ten hypothetical mid-level wizards appear in Europe. Instead of spending their days making pots and pans out of Walls of Iron, they spend their days seeking Excalibur and the Holy Grail and the Fountain of Youth and any other fascinating quest (you know, adventuring) and when not doing that, they're researching new spells and practicing/training for their next level, building their tower, hoarding their libraries of knowledge, etc. - all the stuff wizards normally do.
And even if some of them get the bright idea to create a trip-hammer and stamp out some instant plate mail from Walls of Iron, they probably limit themselves to furnishing their own private army (the guards they hire to defend their homes) and, at most, a modest trade to fund their research.
Anything more than that would be too time-consuming and too distracting to bother with.
This is another valid point that focuses more on psychology and human behavior. A high level wizard could try to turn their spellcasting into an economic superpower, but as money and politics go hand-in-hand, the larger question is "Do they want to bother with the consequences of dabbling in commerce?". Given the outcome could easily be a knife in back of the upstart wizard (whose empire would be built upon his personal abilities, making him the weak link), it simply may not be in his best interests to rock the boat.
<Skipping the various discussions on wall of iron as it does not do what the OP thought it does>
Pathfinder economics runs on willing suspension of disbelief, but here we go.
Unskilled labor is about 33 gp/year.
Skilled labor is about 100 gp/year.
A slave is about 100 gp. Void where prohibited.
A single 6th level spell casting by an 11th level wizard costs 660 gp.So for an industrial revolution wizard's spell to be worthwhile in replacing workers, it must be 20 unskilled person-years of productivity or seven skilled person-years of productivity.
If a golem is three times as productive as a person at unskilled labor, it would need to cost 500 gp or less to pay for itself in five years. Even at 30x efficiency, it's not happening. (Undead do make those returns, and Golarion does have an underground undead trade supplying them to unscrupulous businesses- usually eventually resulting in the undead getting loose. Geb is amongst the world's leading agricultural producers because it uses undead laborers.)
This is delving more into the RAW side of things, particularly in regard to the economy: Magic is expensive, and it's expensive because casters (especially high level ones) are very rare - not one-in-a-million... but not far off. Similarly, for constructs to be worthwhile, they need to be cost-effective and thus dramatically more efficient than the readily available and cheap human labor force.
And that's not touching on how the peasants would feel about losing their jobs to magic/constructs.
More generally, if you want your world to have nearly everyone using at least cantrips and casters as common as flies and a fully developed magitech economy, you can justify that under Pathfinder rules.
If you want the vast majority of the population to lack any magical ability and casters to be rare and to not have had any great effect on the world's economy, you can justify that too.
Pick what kind of world you want to run/play in, do a little hand-waving to justify it and have fun with it.
Digging too deep into "What would it really be like" is sometimes fun, but mostly pointless. There are too many unknowns. Too many assumptions. Too many things unspecified in the rules, because PF isn't a world/economy simulator. It's an adventure game.
One of my favourites from the early part of this thread. Worth reiterating.
Overall answer: The Industrial Revolution happened because of a few key advances in society, brought about by one key idea - information got out and was shared.
In magical societies, information sharing is expensive, and they use magic to back it up. Guns would develop much faster if Arkenstar opened up shops in every major city and spread the technology around. They don't do that. They keep it all close to home, and everyone outside the nation is basically reinventing the wheel, trying to catch up to where Alkenstar is at.
And if they get close, Alkenstar kills them.
Technology doesn't advance in huge leaps...typically there's a breakthrough, and then hundreds of little advancements along the way. making a useful gasoline powered engine is one thing...now think of how many billions of manhours have been spent by millions of very smart engineers the world over to improve little things on those engines, and how many other advances in metallurgy, math, chemistry, electrical engineering, materials, and suchlike were also required for each and every tiny advance in engine technology getting the car engines and jet turbines that we have today.
It's a LOT of time, money, and brainpower. It requires massive investment by society, especially educating EVERYONE possible in the right kind of knowledge.
If you have an uneducated society, without that background in STEM, things will NEVER proliferate.
It is INCREDIBLY easy to cut a technological explosion short by removing one or two key people who a) invent and b) are willing to share. This leaves behind people who can't invent and aren't willing to share what they already know, because that would mean they are outdating themselves, and they will fight 'new' tech tooth and nail not to be assigned to the scrap heap (a very, very VERY common problem in the older days).
To this, you add the uneducated commoners who will also be displaced by high tech...and if you can't educate them and turn them into something productive, they'll get extremely violent about the matter. There's a phrase for this right out of Industrial History - the Luddites.In the module where you head to the Moon, it's noted that, among others, the succubi there seduced and captured a great astronomer and inventor of optics whose devices were revolutionizing things. Pffft gone to the Abyss. Attentive outsiders who can see technology and recognize the ripple effects it can have can EASILY act to forestall such a revolution by removing one or two key elements before the process takes off, or simply directing the research down unproductive, impossible areas.
The fact there might well be a long-lived perceptive force acting against the spread of technology shouldn't come as a surprise to ANYONE. And the massive investments required to launch the explosion means it is much easier to STOP the revolution from ever starting, then it is to get it going.
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So, here are rules you can use to stop an Industrial Revolution:1) Spontaneous Combustion is a thing. That which is most flammable is most likely to explode. This is the entire principle that alchemical fire is based on.
So, incendiary explosives tend to blow up...a lot. massive quantities of flammable materials tend to attract large quantities of fire Elemental energy, if not Elementals themselves. Results, predictable.
As a result, whole branches of chemistry are not pursued because they tend to blow up on you! This would definitely include anything petroleum-based, or dealing with chemical explosives.2) Electricity doesn't always follow the path of least resistance.
This completely shuts down electrical engineering and a lot of mechanical innovation. You can't form a power source for your machinery and control it without use of magic.3) Non-natural materials tend to degrade, decay and go unstable.
This would prevent virtually the entire chemical industry and mass production related to it. FOr instance, 'paper' wouldn't exist, as the acid-treated pressed wood pulp would rapidly decay to uselessness. Processes that are largely mechanical or chemical in origin, without even the partial magic of Alchemy involved, would lose their 'natural soul' and be under constant attack from the very existence of magic, breaking apart quickly and rendered useless.
Only processes that are done by hand, with the touch and power of the living, use of magic, or connection with Alchemy, would endure.4) Outsiders with Luddite agendas are constantly on the lookout for minor inventions which could lead to breakthroughs that would advance ALL of technology/science, and act to forestall them. This could involve buying out the invention and burying it (still used today); killing the maker and quietly removing knowledge of the tech (also used); minimizing acceptance of the device so it quietly fades away into irrelevancy; and similar tactics.
In the end, you get a world where it is difficult to raise the tech level, due to subtle and cunning interference from knowledgeable entities, and effectively active resistance from magic itself. Otherwise, magic or alchemy, a 'living touch' must be involved in the process, making technology that stands alone nearly impossible to accomplish.
The only significant advancements you would be able to make would be in purely mechanical stuff, but you'd run into problems with information exchange, producing the required amount of metal, and power source problems that didn't involve magic.
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If you are talking about 'modern tech' using magic, and how the game isn't set up for it, remember that 'magitech' wasn't possible under the 1E rules.
Why? Because makiing permanent magic items permanently cost you a Point of Con (no getting it back).
Thus, the number of magic items a person could make were very, very limited over their lifetime. Literally, making magic items was LIFE INTENSIVE to the casters involved.They loosened such strings remarkably in later editions, but the premise still remained.
basically, making magic items for others takes time and money that a caster could be using to do other things. Those other things are likely tons more profitable. As a result, making society-wide 'low magic' devices is likely to simply NOT be something any Caster competent enough to do the work wants to have to do.
The other factor is how freaking much money it costs for magitech.
Magitech is huge sunk costs. Look at a Sword +1. Masterwork sword AND 1000 gp in material components. 1300 gp, gone, you can't get it back. Can't use it for anything but sticking in an enemy. 1300 gp buys a LOT of stuff.And General Conquero wants 1000 of these things! Which sucks 1.3 million gp out of the economy, keeps me employed making them for 3 years, occupies a lot of smiths making masterwork swords and neither of us are making more useful things while we do this.
Too, there's the brainpower argument as well.
In the normal world, smart people can go out there, build a better mousetrap, and make a lot of money.
In a magical world, smart people can go out and LEARN MAGIC, which lets you FLY, among other things. The idea of self-improvement over societal improvement is far more motivating to most people, and so engineers designing the next, better set of drainage locks aren't nearly as common as those who just want to make 5th level wizard!Lastly, without a broad public school system finding those with high ability scores among the masses, giving them the training and education to achieve their potential, nothing will rise to scale. The wealthy and the nobility whose taxes would pay for such will resist mightily paying for the education of commoners, and in a magical world, that can be lethal. They simply don't want to create their own competition and pay for their own downfall. Yet without all these educated minds capable of making all the zillions of tiny improvements to tech over time, and demanding more/better/faster with zeal to innovate and put the achievements of yesterday on the trash heap, we would not be where we are today...and its a lot harder to DO that in a magical world.
A complex topic, to be sure.
While I don't agree 100% with everything in the above (Aelyrinth's covering several topics in one go, so that's not surprising), it is still worth the read as he raises good arguments about the challenges of undertaking a such revolution, whether industrial or magical, and some of the impediments that would hinder it - not the least of which is baseline education and the expense, especially for a magic-based revolution.
Overall answer: The Industrial Revolution happened because of a few key advances in society, brought about by one key idea - informationgot out andwas shared.Essentially correct. More precisely, information was shared widely - something that is expensive for magic in D&D/PF, not so much for technology - which is what is really being looked at. Understand that I agree with all of your essentials, just have a thought or two on your points.
First, while technology doesn't advance in huge leaps, it does have key ideas. Linking the steam engine to something that makes use of the work it's doing is one; the ancient Egyptians and daVinci were both familiar with the principles, but didn't hook steam pressure to something that did work (move a belt, or a wheel, or whatever) with it. Another key idea is the reusable mold: do that, and you can make an assembly line (a third key idea), and suddenly you have a creation that is repeatable. Even better, make a mold of the mold, and after a day or two of time and material investment, you can suddenly start making things en masse.
Incremental improvements are fine - they're what get us from the Model T to the Formula 1 - but the key ideas still need to be discovered, such as the blasting cap for firearms. Once that key idea comes about, 50 years later you have fully automatic weapons.
However, the key to the revolution is the sharing of information - in essence, writing it down in more than one or two copies. Your apprentices or workers have it ... and/or you set up a manufactory in another city as well. Or your competition steals it (instead of blows it up.) Literacy is that key. And you are absolutely right about the violent suppression of that sort of thing.
Your points about stopping the Industrial Revolution are pretty spot-on - of course, you want standard physics to work 'Earth normal', but then you also want magic - so of course things get screwed up. As a consequence, all of the reasons for #1-3 - Combustion issues, electrical issues, degredation issues - become 'the reason for that is magic'. Remove magic from the equasion - or have someone whose innate magic capability (or part of it) is channelled into removing magic from the equasion - and you wind up with technology, even modern (or futuristic) technology, capable of existing. The base philosophy here is that 'in an anti-magic field, technology works as it does on Earth.'
You would thus not need magic (necessarily) to 'make' electricity follow the path of least resistance; you 'simply' need to remove magic from the area, and electricity will automatically do that. (That magic is most often needed to do that is an irony not lost on me - or in-world philosophers, presumably.) If magic is there, however, it may (and sometimes does) cause a 'spontaneous combustion' event in gasoline vapors, a sudden rapid increase in boiler pressure, improved combustion of a particular gunpowder charge, or temporarily improve a significantly worse electrical path.
Your Luddite Outsider conspiracy, of course, makes me shiver with delight, of course. ;)
Everything else you argue, Aelryinth, is exactly on par with my views. Kudos.
I'd like to highlight 2 things here:
1. Development as a step by step process, defined by time.
Technology is progressive and non constant. Discoveries are made due to time invested or chance. It happens at different paces in different places of the world. The knowledge on one thing does not necessarily lead to the knowledge of another, unless very tightly connected, and even then it requires understanding which comes in time invested to study and chance (reconstructing, reproducing a process). Magic skips time and therefore...2. Magic circumvents step-by-step knowledge of technology.
Magic is magic, sure there is understanding that comes from it but it is not molecular biology, chemistry, physics...it is abstract as defined in Pathfinder and often linked to mathematics or some research. Divine magic is even less related to the understanding of a process and just mumbojumboin' to your god that you want dem nonbelievers smited yo (thank the gods this doesnt exist).Case study: Glass and the world
The chinese were for a while the most advanced civilisation for quite a while but didnt have good glass manufacture, despite how useful we know glass to be. At the beginning of the glass process its properties and uses were very unknown and limited, unlike developed glass which has allowed us to advance as a civilisation.
The chinese had porcelain, by all means a much better material than glass for the uses they had at the time, so they stuck with that, since there was "no point" to developing the glass industry as much. This is a very interesting topic with much written on it, I am generalising.Relevancy: Magic is porcelain, technology is glass
If you were to bring magic, something that is more advanced than something else, why would you bother developing the worse option? So technology would be a side project at best in a fantasy world.Similarly, because you can create iron out of the arcane ley-line harry club smoking discontinuum, you would not need to develop ore refineries or such stuff. Therefore, your advancement relies solely on magical power.
-supply, demand, and more real worlds in here----
Add the fact that 10 wizards will probably go and monopolise the markets and make everyone else obsolete. This will create and environment where 1 nation/group/person doesnt have access to wizard iron defecation, and will look for an alternative because reasons/prices/revenge/loveinterests. Without the access to magic these guys either discover magic or start a step by step process of SCIENCE, B%!*!ES.
-Locke Lamora is hiding from these guys----
The magic people have limited ways to respond to this. Crush the opposition, anyone trying to do magic in the world besides you, making the step by step process miss a few steps and perhaps something not be discovered at all. Perhaps if we had never found how to make fossil fuels go boom we would've made something else and be much much farther ahead in technology than we are now and fossil fuels was our magic. Or perhaps we would all still wear funny hats and monocles instead, whatever.
If magic is unavailable for research/discovery, again the Harrys have the option to either let nations develop technology or to scorching ray their asses, in which case...yeah same thing.
--------------------------TLDR--------------------------
A world with technology together with magic would probably look extremely different from our non-magic counter part world, so you can never assume "hey why dont they have chain-assembly factories by now?" actually even makes sense as a question.
Technology takes time and is a chain in which you can skip steps. However those steps may have lead to something awesome. But you skipped it, keep drinking tea in porcelain while I look at dying stars.
Anyway.... that's the first four pages of recap, and the toddler is awake, so forum time is over.
Indeed, if we hearken back to 3.5 (as it had rules/guidelines for numbers and levels of NPCs, upon which the spellcasting services were based), and use their numbers (including classification of settlements), we get about 15,268 (combined) sorcerers and wizards in the Inner Sea, out of a crudely estimated 67 million. Or about 0.0023% of the population, with more than half only 1st level. Lumping all casters together (including rangers and paladins) the numbers work out around 63,000 (about 0.094% of population).
That's an interesting study! It does raise some questions though, primarily how relevant 3.5 numbers are for the Pathfinder world building rules. Unfortunately my Dungeon Master Guide has long since been lost to the bag of devouring that is my attic. I did some digging for the relevant rules on the D20SRD, but all I found was this under Spellcasting Services:
D20SRD: In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd-level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells. Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells.
Now, Pathfinder states that you can expect to find a level 1 spellcaster in any given thorp (ie a settlement with fewer than 20 inhabitants), whereas 3.5 states that you need "a small town" in order to find a level 1 spellcaster. For contrast, in Pathfinder you can expect to find spellcasters capable of providing 4th level spells in a small town. Clearly 3.5 and Pathfinder sets dramatically different bars for how common spellcasters are.
In fact, based on those numbers (a town of 200 people* to find a level 1 spellcaster in 3.5, a thorp of 20 to find a level 1 spellcaster in Pathfinder) we can estimate that that level 1 spellcasters are roughly ten times more common in Pathfinder than in 3.5. This grap gradually closes as you go up the spellcasting levels, until the different rules systems eventually agree that spellcasters capable of providing level 8 spells are only found in metropolises.
Finally, it's worth noting that Pathfinder has a variety of settlement modifiers that make spellcasters more common. A good example of this is the "Capital City" sample settlement, a Large City with a holy site. Despite having "Notable NPCs" in the level 4-10 range, it houses spellcasters capable of providing 9th level spellcasting services. I believe the DMG may have similar rules text, but I haven't read the book in a very long time so I don't feel comfortable saying so with confidence.
Honestly, if 10 midlevel wizards appeared in Earth, they'd probably be too busy subjugating the populace and ruling the world to start an industrial revolution.
Uh ... actually, Aelryinth, you decided that my examples of 'judgement calls' were House Rule territory instead of, you know, judgement calls. Nowhere does it say that any particular spell (such as, say, prestidigitation) counts as a 'circumstance bonus'; that's a GM's judgement call - which is Rule #0. Worldbuilding - if there's a farm around the corner - isn't a House Rule, it's worldbuilding, aka a judgement call, Rule #0. If he makes that judgement call the same way all the time, THEN it becomes a house rule - which, sure, is still Rule #0, however you want to write it, but it doesn't make it anything BUT Rule #0, because prestidigitation-as-a-circumstance-bonus is not in the rules.
Magic weapons - or even masterwork weapons - are nowhere in the rules included as 'masterwork tools' for Survival; they apply their masterwork advantage in other ways, and 'as a tool, so +2' is not it. Allowing this is a judgement call, whether as a one-time bonus or house-ruled to always be accessible; that makes it Rule #0.
So, sorry - you can't have it both ways.
Either the GM can make judgement calls on when certain rules apply - whether that's that prestidigitation, a damaging spell, or a masterwork weapon being a bonus of whatever type for any particular skill roll, or that a pig farmer isn't able to be retrained as a wizard - or he can't. If you're allowing Rule #0 for judgement calls, then you have to allow it for all judgement calls, not just the ones you want.
You're arguing terminology for Rule #0 again. it's an English/grammar argument. It's a sign you've lost an argument because now you're down to picking nits on the meaning of words.
Circumstance bonuses are in the rules as explicitly a DM's purview. There aren't really supposed to be many circumstance bonuses that are assigned without the DM, although they do occasionally pop up here and there. So your example of Prestidigitation providing them falls flat...there's no hard rule ANYWHERE that says exactly when to provide a circumstance bonus, the rules say a DM hands them out as they see appropriate to the time and moment. yay! Congrats! You made a point that wasn't a point at all.
And if you're saying a bow is not a tool for hunting game, I know a lot of hunters who are going to raise their eyebrows at you. That's like saying a warhammer can't be used to smash nails and drive spikes. Just because it's a weapon, you're ignoring the fact that the primary use of the bow is a hunting tool. A masterwork missile weapon would be THE primary tool of the trade for a hunter for a bonus on survival checks for hunting, no question about it. Or to put it another way...why don't you go hunting without a missile weapon, and see how many deer you catch? The -10 penalty for not having the right tool for the job suddenly seems highly appropriate, doesn't it?
And furthermore (sighing), use your head a little, okay? It doesn't say what the masterwork tools are for MOST of the skills, because it would take up space and it's fairly common sense. It notes you need tools for skills, masterwork is a +2 bonus, and leaves it to you to remember what those tools are rather then trying to list them out for ALL the different skills that might apply.
And I never said Prestidigitation provides a circumstance bonus to Craft checks. I did say Ray of Frost might provide the bonus to Survival checks hunting for light game, as it is effectively a light magic weapon, after all. But note the 'might'. At any rate, it's biggest thing is that you always have a weapon without having to carry one and ammo, and so even a Str 3 grandmother can pop off pigeons or rats or oversized spiders if she has need to.
Rule 0 is House Rules, GM Fiat, and Changing the Rules. Judgement Calls are not changing the rules, they are a part of the game, they are dealing with adjucating current rules. Worldbuilding that changes the rules is Rule 0. Placing and playing NPC's is not, it's a part of the Game.
If you're making a GM call that peasants and pig farmers CANNOT be retrained to wizards (assuming they qualify), that's not a judgement call, that's rule 0...you're changing the rules that they can be retrained.
If you're saying this particular pig farmer doesn't want to learn wizardry cause he's afraid of magic, that's role-playing. That's part of the rules.
If you're saying this pig farmer can't be trained because he's got no talent for magic, you're rule 0'ing, because now you've introduced 'magic talent' into your world, which is not in the rules, either.
If you're saying "Guys, I'm not going to let you train up 100 level 1 wizards from the peasantry, 'cause it would break the game, so don't try" you're Rule 0'ing by Gentlemen's Agreement.
And I'll say it again - Rule 0'ing is not a BAD THING. But in the context of the rules, you have to have a clear line between the standard that is the written rules, and the stuff that is not, else we don't share a common basis to start from.
This idea that you can avoid the OP's problem without Rule 0'ing makes me laugh. Attempting to define everything the GM does as 'judgement calls' is another case of trying to fit English to your argument, instead of expressing it properly.
You simply cannot follow the current rules and avoid some form of magitech explosion at some point. The power of unlimited casting in multiple venues is simply too world-changing. High level characters can make big, major changes, sure, but it's the broad, low magic that changes the world and society.
==Aelryinth
D20SRD: In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2nd-level spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells. Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells.Now, Pathfinder states that you can expect to find a level 1 spellcaster in any given thorp (ie a settlement with fewer than 20 inhabitants), whereas 3.5 states that you need "a small town" in order to find a level 1 spellcaster. For contrast, in Pathfinder you can expect to find spellcasters capable of providing 4th level spells in a small town. Clearly 3.5 and Pathfinder sets dramatically different bars for how common spellcasters are.
In fact, based on those numbers (a town of 200 people* to find a level 1 spellcaster in 3.5, a thorp of 20 to find a level 1 spellcaster in Pathfinder) we can estimate that that level 1 spellcasters are roughly ten times more common in Pathfinder than in 3.5. This grap gradually closes as you go up the spellcasting levels, until the different rules systems eventually agree that spellcasters capable of providing level 8 spells are only found in metropolises.
Finally, it's worth noting that Pathfinder has a variety of settlement modifiers that make spellcasters more common. A good example of this is the "Capital City" sample settlement, a Large City with a holy site. Despite having "Notable NPCs" in the level 4-10 range, it houses spellcasters capable of providing 9th level spellcasting services. I believe the DMG may have similar rules text, but I haven't read the book in a very long time so I don't feel comfortable saying so with confidence.
There's a couple of twists to this, however, as Pathfinder says two different things about spellcasting services:
In Settlements it talks about a Thorp having 1st level spellcasting.
Under Spellcasting Services it talks about 1st level spellcasting being "reasonably assured" only in a small town. This is basically a clone of the 3.5 SRD contents.
While both are published, I suspect the latter is a simple carryover from 3.5 and the settlement chart might be the actual intent. Though I could be wrong - I haven't gone searching for erratas on the topic.
Furthermore, Pathfinder uses different settlement naming philosophies to 3.5. Thinking about it, this is likely due to OGL reasons as the settlement charts from the 3.5 DMG aren't in the SRD.
For reference:
Thorp: 20-80 (3.5); 0-20 (PF)
Hamlet: 81-400 (3.5); 21-60 (PF)
Village: 401-900 (3.5); 61-200 (PF)
Small Town: 901-2,000 (3.5); 201-2,000 (PF)
Large Town: 2,001-5,000 (3.5); 2,001-5,000 (PF)
Small City: 5,001-12,000 (3.5); 5,001-10,000 (PF)
Large City: 12,001-25,000 (3.5); 10,001-25,000 (PF)
Metropolis: 25,001+ (3.5); 25,001+ (PF)
All in all, it implies at the very least that low level spellcasters are more distributed... but as Pathfinder is silent on levels and numbers it's impossible to say whether that means that the overall number is greater or less than what was suggested in 3.5... to help elaborate:
- 3.5 Metropolis: Is expected to have 1 x 16th, 1 x 15th, 1 x 14th, 1 x 13th, 2 x 8th, 4 x 7th, 2 x 6th, 4 x 4th, 12 x 3rd, 8 x 2nd and 40 x 1st level wizards, and the same again in sorcerers.
Pathfinder Metropolis: Requires a single 16th level wizard to fulfill the arcane spellcasting services requirements.
Thus, trying to compare the 3.5 Level & Numbers chart vs Pathfinder spellcasting services table is comparing apples to oranges, I'm afraid :(
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You simply cannot follow the current rules and avoid some form of magitech explosion at some point. The power of unlimited casting in multiple venues is simply too world-changing. High level characters can make big, major changes, sure, but it's the broad, low magic that changes the world and society.
Really? I've yet to have a magitech explosion in some near forty years of gaming. It's a really easy thing to avoid, even following the rules.
Please show me where the rules that require a magitech explosion. Not a thought experiment, not a "if/then" exercise. Show me the page number where it says X number of sessions your game will have an industrial revolution, no saving throw. If I am following the rules, at what level of play does it occur. What is the title header for that section in the book?
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I can honestly see a lot of reasons for why you don't have a technology explosion from hand of fate to the illuminati. Consider the following just off the top of my head . . .
1) Gods have agents wandering around offing any mortals who could disrupt the balance.
2) All those high level wizards who could trigger it? Why would they? If you have semi-phenomenal cosmic power and can create your own private paradadise (literally at 20th level) why would you WANT to spend your day working to make money. At lower levels you can make more with 1 successful dungeon crawl than you'd earn in a year of normal work.
3) The best and brightest who would be driving this technological evolution are looking into other sources of money magic, looting old ruins etc rather than building a better mouse trap.
4) Mastering magic is a long, ardourous process fraught with danger and risk at the end of which you can make a persons brains melt out their ears. Technology is a relatively quick process which any peasant who can pick up a scythe can apply. There's a LOT of mages/rulers who wouldn't want that kind of power in the common rable's hands. Imagine the result of several historical revolutions if the noble's had a few powerful mages that could pelt the mob with lightning bolts and fireballs?
5) Cultural factors that simply don't see/care about that sort of thing and may in fact go to great pains to stop it. Case in point Tom who came up with a new method mining that produced a lot more ore which he called "Strip minining". Followed soon after by a bizzare series of accidents involving badgers, tree's, poison ivy and the last person who was involved in the test run accidentallly, brutally cutting their own head off while coming their beard. A lot of technology is going to hit terrain protected by nature classes e.g. druids or races to whom strip mining a hill isn't going to be seen as a great new source of wealth but rather an abomination that must be stopped. Look at how many ideas saw a violent attempt to stop/supress them in our own history (luddites) and then expand to include races like the elves who would have a fundamentally different cultural view and importance on things like natural forests?
6) Tradition has a much greater weight in a world where the tomb really IS cursed or the old "we have always done it this way" is being enforced by Elves/Dwarves/Elixer Drinkers who have been doing it that way for the past several hundred years.
7) The genius factor. Being smart simply isn't good enough lots of smart people can look at the same thing day after day, year after year and not change anything you need someone capable of coming up with something new. Take the old myth about Newton and his apple then ask yourself how many people over the millenia of human history looked at falling apples and DIDN'T come up with a new theory?
8) It runs into a problem with someone coming up with a brilliant new idea then trying to sell it to a non-humanoid who can't use the weird device that requires those things called "hands".
9) Funding a lot of inventions saw heavy investment by nobles for their potential profit nobles aren't going to be as inclined to sink money into that sort of thing when they can hire a mage to do the same for less.
There's 9 reasons to stop a industrial/magitech revolution in its tracks thrown off the top of my head without putting the kind of thought into it such a revolution would actually require.
All of which are Rule 0, introducing factors to the game that are not in the rules. The list was done extensively earlier.
1) Other gods have agents wandering around saving those people and driving progress forwards. It helps they are the 'good' folks, since they are saving lives and trying to make people's lives better.
2) And WHY do people keep on bringing up high level wizards? High level wizards don't drive this stuff. Low level spellcasters proliferating, probably by teaching one another since their 'betters' surely aren't going to do so, would do it.
3) 3 days for one wizard of any level to teach wizardry to a commoner/1 with the right Int score. You don't need 'best and brightest.' You need an 11 Int.
4) Technology is a long, arduous practice of using the scientific method and tens of thousands of man hours of fruitless experimentation and research to make minor advances. It advances best when you distribute that load over thousands of people.
Your language on mastering magic is pure Rule 0. And we aren't caring about 'mastering' magic. We're about 'apprenticing' magic. It's all that is required.
As for mobs and wizards...you can make the same argument with guns and grenades. Guess what? The mobs get guns and grenades. In this case, they'd go get magic, too.
5) And then the perpetrators are brought to justice and executed for murder, and civilization advances on.
6) Uh, ever hear about a little thing called Chaos? Very strong in fantasy worlds. Drives change and conflict.
It's Law that adheres to tradition and advances slowly.
And it's Neutrality that reaps the benefit of both.
You're Rule 0'ing, 'because tradition'.
7) Broad, low disbursement of a problem is often more effective then one genius. That genius will get powerful. Lots of okay smart people advance societies. Not every wizard is going to be Reed Richards and outthink the rest of hte people on the planet.
8) I have no idea what this is trying to say? WHo cares if non-thumb using creatures can't use a gun?
9) By your own #2, you've proven that magic is a massive return on investment for wizards. Nobles would CERTAINLY invest in something with a positive return. Not having to pay for spellcasting services and having dozens of spellcasters on the payroll is a MASSIVE return on your 30 gp to train one.
See? It goes both ways.
==Aelryinth
I can honestly see a lot of reasons for why you don't have a technology explosion from hand of fate to the illuminati. Consider the following just off the top of my head . . .
<snip for brevity>
All of which are pretty solid means of selling the world-state as it is while maintaining verisimilitude, which is the topic under discussion. Nice work.
And don't mind Aelyrinth. He just has a bee in his bonnet about Rule 0 vs RAW.
Honestly, he's just trying to prove a point, and we've been helping him. Simply put, nothing not actually in the rules - such as the existence of trainable NPCs - is disallowed; GM interpretation, again, is disallowed, since it is by definition 'Rule #0'. Therefore, the very existence of the vast majority of NPCs Aelyrinth thinks should be trained is not a part of the rules, and therefore the concept of a world-wide magitech explosion is eliminated.
As per the rules.
Aelryinth gave great reasons for the GM to disallow such a thing to happen within those first three pages; at some point he decided to show why, strictly according to the rules, there SHOULD be. We helped him by not requiring him to show his work, i.e. 'show us in the rules the NPCs you're going to be training'. So .... let's move past that part of what he's trying to do.
That said, well, the rest has been covered pretty well.
snarky stuff
Actually, he presented it as Rule 0's acting against the inevitability, which doesn't prove your point at all. As the DM would have to intervene and say "All this stuff happens which prevents it from happening."
Otherwise, it's pretty much inevitable, which is MY point. I just noted that reasonable Rule 0's work exactly in the opposite direction of what he posited, and they certainly aren't RULES.
And don't mind Raynulf, he's on his high horse looking down on us where he can't see anything.
==Aelryinth
Honestly, he's just trying to prove a point, and we've been helping him. Simply put, nothing not actually in the rules - such as the existence of trainable NPCs - is disallowed; GM interpretation, again, is disallowed, since it is by definition 'Rule #0'. Therefore, the very existence of the vast majority of NPCs Aelyrinth thinks should be trained is not a part of the rules, and therefore the concept of a world-wide magitech explosion is eliminated.
As per the rules.
Aelryinth gave great reasons for the GM to disallow such a thing to happen within those first three pages; at some point he decided to show why, strictly according to the rules, there SHOULD be. We helped him by not requiring him to show his work, i.e. 'show us in the rules the NPCs you're going to be training'. So .... let's move past that part of what he's trying to do.
That said, well, the rest has been covered pretty well.
And now Wyrm has gone from simply bad misinterpretation to an outright lie.
GM interpretation is definitely part of the rules...as long as it involves adjudication of current rules. He seems to have a very hard time grasping the idea of 'core rules' and 'house rules', as if the core of the game doesn't really exist.
Ruling that no NPC's exist that are trainable is NOT in the current rules, and is RUle 0. NPC's exist, populations exist, all part of published settings, house settings, and in the rules.
Yet Wyrm is constantly trying to make it seem that suddenly removing the possibility of those NPC's from existence simply so they can't be trained as something else is NOT a major deviation from the rules, blatant GM Fiat, and not a 'judgement call'?
Wyrm's attempt to draw a hugely inclusive circle with 'GM judgement' is falling flat. He should keep to proper definitions and less hyperbole.
And he should enjoy being referred to in the 3rd person. Obviously he doesn't want to be addressed directly, either.
==Aelryinth
Still waiting on that page number.
Also, why do we care if something is or isn't a GM Fiat, a judgement call, Rule 0, or an Act of whatever deity that you choose? By a show of hands, does anyone care?