If I were to pick one low level spell, other then Prestidigitation, that would reshape the magical world, it would be Shape Stone.
A 5th level caster with a 16 int gets two of these a day. That's the ability to instantly shape 30 cubic feet of stone a day to whatever is needed.
With one casting of this spell:
26 stone bricks per cubic foot = make 390 bricks. 780 bricks per day. Eventually, you can pave any small town or village.
make a stone wall 4 inches thick, 15' long, and 3' high. Eventually, you can turn every house into a village into constructed by stone.
make hundreds of feet of quarter inch thick, 3 inch pipe for carrying water or waste per casting. Sewage, irrigation and water systems. You could make the larger pipes used in main sewage tunnels a few feet at a time every day.
If you have a stone 'floor', you can create 30 cubic feet per casting by making a pit down into the existing rock, and taking that rock and building a container above. 60 cubic feet a day will hollow out a 10 x10 x20 storage area in 2/12 weeks. Granaries, silos, what have you?
Create half inch thick 1x1 tiles in whatever pattern you like. 360 per day. Stone flooring everywhere.
You can make stone posts, fenceboards and curbs, dozens of feet at a time. No more relying on wood. Also, roof tiles, stone beams, tables, chairs, poles.
If someone gives you a Rod of Widen Spell, that's the equivalent of casting each spell SEVEN more times. 120 cubic feet per casting. Your daily production of material is now 240 cubic foot - you could make thousands of stone bricks per day while hollowing out an 8x10x10 room in less then four days, or 'mine out' a similar volume by reducing the stone to easily processed ore. You could drive a 1 foot square hole 240' feet through solid stone with one casting, and turn the entire amount in round spheres easily rolled to wherever you want to put them.
A plethora of casters with this spell could easily catapult a civilization from reliance on dirt, thatch and wood right to building with stone on a massive scale, and without the huge drudgery involved with having to cut and clip each stone down. It would be like having walking cement factories and sculptors walking around to make what you wanted.
Architecture, mining, housing, city planning, sewage and sanitation, roads - it would revolutionize any standard medieval society. Just keep applying it slowly and steadily over time.
3rd level spell. :P
==Aelryinth
... um. Okay, if you say so. I mean, you WERE wondering why there are deserts, if a 1st level cleric = infinite water; you also weren't discussing 'just gardens'. A subsistence farmer doesn't farm 40 acres, I agree - they farm 2-4 - but you were talking about farming, not about gardens. If you'd looked at the link (which you clearly didn't), you'll see that most grains use the standard amount, or 10% more - because they don't store it.
Anyhow. I think you have a lot of valid points; your list of spells is a good example. I think you ignore everyone else's referenced facts if they don't support your theory, though, so this really isn't a debate.
you can grow many grains in drier climes then will support tomatoes (excluding rice, of course). Not at the density of areas with lots of water, however. You have to remember, we're talking far, far fewer plants/meter then they put down nowadays. You don't find many tomatoes and wild onions growing in the Plains states, for instance, but you find tons of wheat. (soil probably a factor...and remember that Georgia has the best onion soil in the world! viva Vidalia!)
Your calcs are built to what the ground and soil can support, without the plants competing with one another. We're not talking quite that level. if yOu're lucky, you can maybe do 1/3 to 1/4 of that density without machines, modern fertilizers, and similar stuff. We aren't talking ANY of those tools being available, so plants/sq meter will be MUCH less.
So, keep things relative. Talking about irrigating a modern field with create water is a no go, because you literally have no method to deliver the water, EXCEPT plant by plant, bucket by bucket. You can't just make it rain Created Water (well, you can with Drench, but that's another topic...I could see Drench enticing farmers to grow plants in 5' clusters for easy application of the spell.) Farming in the old days was done much differently then in the current...all manual labor, no machines, without the huge fields you see nowadays.
People had to do everything, with all the wasted space and imperfections involved in doing so.
==Aelryinth
Not to be a dingus, but if we're talking far, far fewer plants/meter than they put down nowadays, how is the result relevant to a discussion of technological explosion in a fantasy setting? I mean, aren't you ceding the argument that magic is as effective as technological innovation, and therefore doesn't achieve the premise of the thread topic?
We're actually talking application of water, Hitdice.
If you want to talk massive modern farming practices, we're getting into animated Combines powered by perpetual motion devices. That's a much higher degree of techno magic.
WITHOUT going to the point of mechanizing and eliminating the need for human labor, magic makes the human labor side of things MUCH more productive then they would be otherwise...because the magic-using humans are now basically your machines. Which is the premise of the thread. Widespread magic is thus more then enough to cause significant changes in society that mimic to an extant what technology did.
==Aelryinth
... um. Okay, if you say so. I mean, you WERE wondering why there are deserts, if a 1st level cleric = infinite water; you also weren't discussing 'just gardens'. A subsistence farmer doesn't farm 40 acres, I agree - they farm 2-4 - but you were talking about farming, not about gardens. If you'd looked at the link (which you clearly didn't), you'll see that most grains use the standard amount, or 10% more - because they don't store it.
Anyhow. I think you have a lot of valid points; your list of spells is a good example. I think you ignore everyone else's referenced facts if they don't support your theory, though, so this really isn't a debate.
Me? i didn't say anything about why there are deserts, nor did I ever claim infinite water. i think you're quoting someone else who couldn't do basic math. AFAIK, someone touched on the water subject and someone else went full bore on the math behind how 'Decanters don't replace Rain and HAHAHAHAHA you thought they'd replace a stream?'
2-4 acres of farming by hand is basically gardening :0.
A level 1 cleric can keep acres of plants green, yes. Unlimited, no. Able to get through a not-complete drought? with good planning, yes. Able to maximize and even out the water supply situation, yes. Able to supply basic drinking water to a LOT of people/animals? yes.
==Aelryinth
We're actually talking application of water, Hitdice.
If you want to talk massive modern farming practices, we're getting into animated Combines powered by perpetual motion devices. That's a much higher degree of techno magic.
WITHOUT going to the point of mechanizing and eliminating the need for human labor, magic makes the human labor side of things MUCH more productive then they would be otherwise...because the magic-using humans are now basically your machines. Which is the premise of the thread. Widespread magic is thus more then enough to cause significant changes in society that mimic to an extant what technology did.
==Aelryinth
Okay, but I'd like to introduce millennia old feats of engineering, like the roman aqueducts, mayan irrigation canals and just rice paddies for that matter, to the conversation. Do you think a level 1 pathfinder cleric continuously casting create water would have a significant impact on any of those systems?
Maybe the gods have better things for their clerics to do than remove deserts. Or the gods of the deserts get irritated when people try?
In any case, this is why (as mentioned above) one of the first house rules I made many years ago was limiting casters and working out, at least in my head, why there might be limited tech in areas.
Rome was actually rather backwards technologically -- better weapons and armor, better horse harnesses, and other things developed in the Middle Ages (and even the Dark Ages). I think Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle is the source where I read this, but it is no longer available to me to check this for sure. What Rome had over the surrounding civilizations was organization. But when the surrounding civilizations advanced, they caught up with, closed in on, and eventually crushed Rome (and much later, Constantinople).Most fantasy realms are based on medieval Europe or a similarly functioning culture. What people forget is that the "medieval" era was a post-apocalyptic society. There had been much better technology, communication, health, and political stability in the past, but when the Roman Empire collapsed it all degenerated into what many felt was barbarism. (Not entirely nor exactly, but go with me on this)
{. . .}
Depends what area of technology you're looking at. Arms and armor, certainly later civilizations were pretty much 100% ahead of what the Romans had. Norman knights vs Caesar's legions, that's a bad matchup for Julius.
That said, taking military technology as your chief metric can give a distorted picture, because - in the conflict-ridden era that followed the Roman collapse - military technology was at a particular premium. Because military power was very important and often had first dibs on resources, it was able to avoid regressing as many other technologies did and instead advance.
However, if you look at technology more broadly, yes, there are significant regressions that follow the Roman collapse.
Scroll down this page and ask yourself, is anyone in the Visigothic kingdoms or Carolingian Europe still able to do this? If you had plenty of money and went looking, could you find people who still had the knowhow to make this stuff for you?
Most of the answers are either 'probably not' or 'only in the Eastern Roman Empire'
Here's a few fields particularly noteworthy for remaining at a classical or sub-classical level for centuries after the Roman collapse:
Medicine - Galen represented the height of European medical achievements for centuries.
Architecture and engineering - It took many hundreds of years after the Roman collapse for European monumental architecture to start producing buildings that could compete with Imperial Roman architecture. Prior to about 1000 you're still in the era of people looking at Roman architecture and comparing it to the work of giants. Maybe by 1200 you've got parts of Western Europe that could have built something like a Collosseum again (though they were more into cathedrals by that point, of course).
Public sanitation - If you want sewers or indoor plumbing in the age of Beowulf, well, forget about it.
Mining and hydraulics - it took till the 1700s to rediscover some of these principles, and even then, using it to break barrels is a bit less dramatic than using it to knock down mountains.
Plenty of other civil stuff, too. Heating and central air. Aqueducts. Mechanical reapers. Etc.
TLDR - taking military gear as the chief guidepost to the overall technological level of post-Roman society misses that the regressions were concentrated in civil fields, quality-of-life technologies, and such, rather than military technology.
It's fair to describe post-Roman Europe as post-apocalyptic. In fact the Roman collapse sets a lot of the tropes for modern post-apocalyptic fiction. (Right down to military technology continuing to advance while other areas wither - the Resistance in Terminator had high-tech weapons, but all the civilian technology is in ruins and they're burning wood to keep warm).
That said... it's also fair to point out that, while the post-apocalyptic phase was real, Pathfinder maps more closely to times when by all reasonable measures the post-apocalyptic phase was over - high medieval/Renaissance.
Maybe the gods have better things for their clerics to do than remove deserts.
The problem is that even in the Golarion setting you have a deity like Abadar who would actually endorse certain practices as they are done with the purpose of advancing civilization.
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I mean...all of these arguments mostly just goes to show that Pathfinder is not an economy or civilization simulation by RAW...it's an adventuring game and spells like create water are mostly designed to help PC's get through deserts and similar environments. They weren't meant to totally replace irrigation.
That's not exactly a novel conclusion...
I ask you the same thing I ask him: What spells would they take and how would they use them as a 1st level wizard that would offset the (taking average) seven years such training would take? Seven years of contributing nothing, but needing to be fed, clothed and supplied with expensive tomes and books to learn from?You realize that spellcasting is literally worth money? You could probably take Profession (Mage) for gods sake. Even just repeated castings of prestigitiation can contribute to society.
No more than Profession (Butcher). There is the argument of selling spellcasting services, but that is a service and as such doesn't generate wealth for the society, merely reallocates it to the caster (simple logic states that someone needs to earn the money to pay for the casting, thus, spellcasting services cannot be the basis of an economy).
So unless you go the route of Eberron (which is a campaign setting sort-of-but-not-really built upon the very principle that is being discussed) magic is not a very viable means of putting food in bellies and roofs overhead.
More importantly, as I've expressed a few times, the concept of "everyone should be a caster" is in complete defiance of human(oid) nature. Brunel, Hawking, Einstein, Tesla, Jobs etc are the exception, not the rule.
Also, why are you only using the spells from the book when the rules are specifically for Adventures.
Use the spell research rules to make some more mundane focused ones, or make some command use items or even just potions. The Gamesmasters guide actually specifically says that non-adventuring focused items exist that aren't detailed in Pathfinder because of the games adventuring focus, so why not make some for your community?
Because they are the baseline for what magic can do. Once you depart from that paradigm you are dealing with a custom world where the rules are changed, much the same as if you follow Aelyrinth's logic of having every humanoid capable of manifesting sorcerous abilities, or invent an ancient semi-intelligent symbiotic-with-humanity hive-mind food forest that sustains and nurtures its human population to allow them to live free of the banality of agriculture. All of these are possible in a fantasy setting, but that doesn't mean they are in Golarion nor should be.
Question: How many people need an advanced degree in physics to learn a new language, learn how to dance, and memorize things?
Answer: None. None of what you described is required to learn magic.
A person of Int 11 can learn 1st level spells, and cantrips. Prestidigitation alone would revolutionize workloads.
An Int 11 person can get a degree in engineering - it still takes hard work, 4 years and a hefty debt for the tuition fees. And a 1st level wizard takes, on average, seven years - which is basically the equivalent of a PhD in terms of time.
Additionally, prestidigitation is one of the most useful cantrips in existence, but still only performs 'minor tricks' that are largely up to the GM to place boundaries on. It could be used to make housemaids super-efficient... but would you spend 7 years at university to be better at cleaning house? And how would you ever repay the college fees?
It only requires that time as a 1st level character. Anytime after 1st level, it requires a teacher and the amount of xp. Xp is magic. XP satisfies every condition you named.
NPCs do not gain XP, except by GM fiat. Thus, again, if the GM wishes to create a custom world where the overall populations gain XP and take levels in Wizard to use their spells for everyday activities, they can. But it requires GM intervention to go against the paradigm of the system.
Magic is actually affecting the world. Physics is the study of the mechanics behind affecting the world, the equivalent of magical RESEARCH.
But if the spells have already been designed, you need to know enough to operate them, NOT enough to modify or improve them, or the formula behind WHY they work...only that they do.
You're trying to associate magic with theoretical physics, which would be restricted to only those with great skill in magic. The level of skill we're talking about is that of technicians and operators, MAYBE engineers, and simply knowing what to do, not total comprehension of WHY it works, which is what you are trying to draw a parallel to. I personally think if you can do all the math to build a good, clean house, you could be a low level wizard.
FYI: I am an engineer.
An engineering degree is dedicated to teaching you things that are already known and some of which haven't actually changed for centuries (no, really). The formulas are long known and established, the systems already in place, and for most it's just a matter of learning how and when to apply them to do what you want.
It's a four-year full-time degree which draws from the top 15% of students, has an enormous drop-out rate, doesn't pay a cent (forcing part time work to still be dirt poor) and leaves you with a debt about on par with the national average income (gross).
"Just learning the formula" is, actually, not easy.
Your argument only holds water if, put simply, magic is actually really, really easy - more on par with learning to drive a car in real life than learning a trade, let alone gaining a degree. But again, that is GM fiat adjusting the paradigm (casters = rare, thus, magic = difficult), so really can't be used as an argument for why Golarion (or similar settings) should be on the verge of a technological revolution.
As for who can learn magic, the rules make no distinctions between PC's and NPC's. The game itself assumes magic is as basic as science, and wizardry is potentially available to anyone smart enough to figure out how to use it. Wizardry is knowing how to push the buttons of existence. Unlike sorcery, it doesn't require a bloodline.
So, anyone could potentially be a wizard, there's no 'magic potential' involved.
You can define it differently in your own game. I did, because I like the 'not everyone can learn magic' trope.
And we get to the key argument here: Hypothetically speaking, everyone could potentially be a wizard... but that doesn't mean that it is likely to ever happen.
It's in the same ball park of "Everyone in the world could be Lawful-Good, get along, end wars, share freely with the needy and live happily ever after". Hypothetically... sure. Actually... no.
... That's enough for one post.
Technology is viable - one might say inevitable - because it does progress, can become mass-produceable. Costs for technology come down, or aren't so high in the first place.
Very few people realise how much of a factor this is. When I saw my first LCD monitor at a computer show at Javits in NYC, I asked howmuch it was. Now this was for a 15 inch job that had a resolution ofmaybe 1024x768, could have been smaller. I was given a price of over 15 thousand for the monitor alone.
Xerox never brought the Altos, the machine that inspired the Lisa and Macintosh, into mass production as they could not figure a way to make the machine for under a COST of thirty seven thousand.
As you can see things have changed.
Learning A SPELL is not the same as learning ALL MAGIC, Raynulf. You're comparing being able to handle one facet of engineering knowledge, such as maybe how to make a catapult and aim it successfully (= one cantrip) to being able to up and make the components of a 747 or something.
Completely different scales.
And your engineering degree took you 4 years and a lot of money because you had to learn a LOT of unnecessary, fundamental stuff that you've probably forgotten because it's not used.
Likewise, there's nothing in the rules that says it takes 7 years to learn cantrips. It merely says that's how old a level 1 mage is, NOT when they started.
if people specialized in just one facet of engineering and were taught specifically to it, there's nothing that says they need to be particularly smart. People go to school for TWELVE YEARS AND END UP BEING MAIDS. Yeah, I'd go to school and learn Prestidigitation to seed a field in 1/10th the time, get all my household tasks done in minutes, raise cleanliness and quality of life immensely, and save HOURS AND HOURS OF TIME.
You keep ignoring the TIME SAVINGS.
So, yep, do that in a heartbeat. So would anyone with any sense. You can spend hours breaking your back for the rest of your life planting seeds, and then more hours having to beat the chaff off them, or you can learn ONE SPELL and take care of that whole thing leisurely, in a few hours of time, for the price of a couple years of education, at the same time magnifying the output of your fields.
As for cost...you're the one trying to bring in college costs and the massive infrastructure of higher education with its cost spiral. If a 5th level master taught 2-10 students a year, society would change REALLY fast. Especially if they turn around and teach students of their own.
Single little tricks have ALWAYS been easy to learn. heck, there's a trait to learn cantrips - Grandma's Little Trick. It's EASY.
Furthermore, you're comparing modern engineering to magic, instead of Golarion level engineering knowledge to magic. Again, different paradigms.
You're trying to make the argument that everyone learning magic is Dumb. I posit that is a really dumb attitude.
The reason it won't be done in the game is because Pc's are special. In a 'real' magical world, everyone who could use magic would leap to use it as soon as they saw what it could do. Could YOU imagine what members of your circles of friends would not want to learn it? even if you couldn't be an archmage?
I can't. It's too bloody useful.
==Aelryinth
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"First level spells and cantrips are useless'.
Oh my god. Have you ever even THOUGHT about what such minor spells could do for time savings for people back then? if the population could just use cantrips, it would be incredible.
Yes. Actually I have. I've run a lot of games in Eberron, where low level magic is common... but it's not omnipresent, which your argument requires.
Once you apply training times (putting aside GM fiat methods of dodging them), the question becomes what the successful graduates will do, and how much will they expect to be paid? And if it's more cost effective to hire commoners to perform backbreaking labor then pay some wizard to seed your field, then the commoners will still be their laboring away. This is true in the real world as well - education/training comes at an expense.
But running through the examples (noting that 1st level 'common' casters will have at best 2 1st level slots if a wizard, or 1 if an adept).
- SEEDING A FIELD: It still needs to be plowed, which is the most time consuming portion of work. Furthermore, you are applying GM fiat to what the spell can do: It has a range of 10ft and can slowly lift 1 lb. of material at a time, so while it could move l lb of grain and slowly distribute it in the furrow, and close the furrow at a rate of 1 lb of soil per round, it is entirely the GM's discretion as to whether it's actually more efficient than doing it manually. Furthermore, it is only GM fiat that makes prestidigitation more precise than manual effort.
CLEANING: This is where prestidigation truly shines. It's great for cleaning things. Of course, it only cleans 1 cubic foot per round, so cleaning the house still takes hours of monotony, but it may be more cost efficient to mage-clean a house than hire some maids, depending on the cost of education.
CLEARING FIELDS: prestidigitation doesn't actually do that. It slowly lifts material of up to 1 lb. It can't free stones from the ground (unless there's less than 1 lb of material on it), nor can it make anything move quickly. Mage hand might be slightly better suited, but even then, you'd need to work with someone with a pry bar or spade (not shovel) to work in conjunction to break it out.
BUILDING STUFF: prestidigitation does not pound in nails. It can slowly exert about 1 lb of force, and cannot enact permanent change other than moving (pounding in a nail is more than simply moving), cleaning or soiling vanishes after 1 hour. It can hold a nail... but really.
An unseen servant is mindless, invisible, Strength 2 and incapable of performing any task of DC higher than 10 and that cannot be done untrained. Milking cows is monotonous, but milk maids have forearms like iron for a reason - Strength 2 isn't going to cut it. Furthermore, as anyone who's worked with livestock will be aware, cows do have minds of their own, and even Int 1 or 2 is going with triumph over Int -. Putting the unseen servant among the livestock is unlikely to fare well.
Putting them to work on monotonous but not arduous tasks like mending nets, cleaning, sorting etc... that's fine. But each one is about a tenth as effective at most farm activities as a 1st level commoner. Because they're slow, mindless and weaker than kittens (sawing timber, for example, would be painfully slow).
But that's 10gp of spellcasting services to do what a laborer could do better for 1sp.
Endure Elements. Per casting, one person doesn't need a coat for a day. It's nice in an emergency... but really, it's easier to put on heavier clothing (and cheaper if you have to pay for the casting)
Purify Food and Drink is indeed an awesome spell, if you have an extremely religious society where clerics or adepts are common place it could save a lot of wastage (though if they charge for it, as per the published rules... then not so much).
Mage Hand lets you pick something 5lb or less up from 25ft away. Or you could walk there. Convenient, but not exactly worldshaking.
Ray of Frost, or you could throw a rock (free), use a sling (free) or carry a club (free). Also, the spell does not freeze water, it deals cold damage. GM fiat could argue that you could freeze some water with it (and how much per casting), but by default, that isn't what the spell does.
Spark is a magical convenience and will likely save a good 2-10 minutes a day for someone.
Detect Poison is most useful in determining whether something is inedible without having to rely on more mundane senses or judgement. Whether booze counts as a poison normally is up to GM fiat, but hardly the primary use. Determining if a certain creature (e.g. spider) is poisonous is handy, though generally most wildlife and plants in a region will quickly be categorized and known by the locals, rendering it largely obsolete. Handy, but I doubt it would actually change the socio-economic landscape.
Mending 10 minutes to fix a 1 lb object isn't bad, especially for broken plates, small tools (only), light clothes etc. As long as the spellcasting is free. It would lessen the burden on the household (a little).
Magic Missile is great for murder, robbery, or general mayhem. After all, why hold back when the other guy could also be rocking a magic missile or two, and everyone has 2-3hp? Be Han. Shoot first. Actually, this applies to most offensive spells, and let's not go into the details of how charm person or sleep would get abused to hell and gone if everyone had spellcasting.
Comprehend Languages is convenient but dangerous, as it imparts literal meaning, rather than the actual meaning (having someone tell you that they're horse-horse-tiger-tiger when they mean they're "so-so" is entertaining, but prone to cause confusion), and discourages one to actually learn the language. Handy for travelers mostly, but of little value to society overall.
Detect Charm is great if you live in Andoran (it's a regional spell), especially if every scumbag and conman had charm person on hand.
See Alignment oh boy... Why am I thinking Orwell?
Anyway...
The key point of your argument is that "If they just had magic, life would be so much better!", which is one I'm familiar with. My counter was and is as follows:
- 1) Spellcasting is not an ability one 'just has', it's something that has to be developed and maintained. While everyone just 'having' helicopters would solve a lot of traffic woes, the end convenience doesn't create the path to that reality.
2) Without heavy GM intervention, magic adds a lot of conveniences, but doesn't solve/remove the actual hardships of medieval life.
You're trying to make the argument that everyone learning magic is Dumb. I posit that is a really dumb attitude.
I'm making the argument that everyone in the world (somehow) raising the level of education to one where everyone can use magic is impractical and against human nature, and that even the hypothetical broad-scale application of magic would not revolutionize the world as you believe it will.
I draw comparisons to the real world because, put simply, it is the easiest way to illustrate how people behave and society functions: Most people can't fix their own car; most people can't program; most people can't operate heavy vehicles; most people can't wire up their own home.
Most people learn the most basic skills necessary in order to do their job, get paid, and go home to their family. Even if it's not very efficient (which is just as true now as it was in medieval times).
Mmm.
Seeding a field would at be at least as accurate with Presti then as hand, and not subject to fatigue. And its continuous, and YOU DON"T HAVE TO BEND OVER.
Farm workers call Strawberries 'the devil's fruit'. Why? Because it's hidden and you HAVE TO BEND OVER.
Picking and planting Rice actually curves the spine over time. "bent and old" is there because of hard labor you have to do.
Prestidigitation can handle all of that for you.
Clearing a field: I've had to help clear a field before. The town wanted to put in two baseball fields, and needed help to clear them out.
What did they do? Mobilized scores of kids and families, gave us buckets, and we walked in a straight line picking up rocks.
Not huge rocks. Not even 1 lb rocks. Just average, small rocks. They tore up the grass and stuff, and we picked up rocks, and dumped them in a truck. Rocks over a pound were a mere fraction of what was there.
But when we got done, we had a field you could grow grass in, mostly black dirt. Perfect farm field material.
I cannot imagine how long that would take a single farmer to do. From tearing up and all that bending over to pick up rocks, to hauling them back and forth.
Time and labor savings.
Cleaning rooms: 1 cubic foot at 1 inch high is twelve square feet. That can dust an entire room in less then a minute, sweep a good floor absolutely clean in the same amount of time, and doesn't require getting water, rags, elbow grease and does the job perfectly. It can reach the highest ceilings, hanging chandeliers, the inside and out of glass, scrub down walls. It removes stains you couldn't get rid of easily by hand. Does the windows and doors and Grandma's silver.
And the amount of effort saved not having to water, handscrub, and dry clothes, in addition to the amount of wear and tear saved, is both a tremendous time and cost savings.
You know what else it could do? Clean a farm field of pests. It might take a while, but if you zap infested plants and 'clean' them of, say, potato beetles, again, time and money.
Mending: Vastly extending the lifespan of your tools, clothing, and whatever else is a major marginal cost savings once again, and lets you afford higher quality stuff because you don't have to purchase it.
when you have a thousand nails to put in, having them all preset in place with a glance is, again, more time savings over time. per nail, no. Ditto screws. Ditto being able to mark off cuts. Time, time, time, physical effort.
Sawing stuff? If they can do it while you're doing other stuff, that's Time again. If all the do is push the lumber against the rotating saw, that'll work, too. Mindless isn't 'bad' for this, it's PERFECT...it's exactly what machines do. They'll do the job perfectly each time, over and over, without error. It's your own personal robot servant and laborer. Time and money again.
Nails? I've had to put a few roofs on. If those shingles could slide into place perfectly by eyeball, and the four nails spin into place perfectly so all I had to do was bring down my hammer down without having to worry about smashing my damn fingers...yeah, I'd get done twice as fast. No tapping that nail to set it, just pound the sucker in! Time.
And now, you keep using the 'pay someone else' argument. I'm not talking about paying someone else, I'm' talking about how it affects the life of the person who NOW HAS magic. If you think that spellcasting will be expensive once you have a lot of minor spellcasters around you're ignoring supply and demand. We're talking about what would happen, not how Paizo is currently modeling an unrealistic economy.
And sure, Charm and Sleep spells will proliferate...instead of getting a knife in the gut or cosh to the back of the head. Same thing. Same people will misuse them, and they'll get punished the same way. You aren't creating a new problem, just reflavoring an old one.
Regional spells that are useful rapidly expand outside the region they are used in.
Comprehend Languages means you don't have to spend years learning multiple languages to talk to someone or something. You can always understand them. Time saved. Arguing that you might get slang or context wrong is not an argument vs not being able to understand them at all. Would you rather spend years learning languages or a month puzzling out one spell you can use if needs come to it?
Works on printed stuff, too. You could actually read that Russian newspaper, or the Arabic stuff on the TV. Or piss the Church off by actually being able to read the Bible in Latin instead of your native Polish.
For hunting: Come on. You want to compare a ranged touch attack that'll hit twice as often and do more damage then a thrown rock at range? A sling, which you need proficiency in or suffer a penalty to hit? or the expense of a bow and arrow? Keep in mind that not only will you hit and kill things more with the Ray, it's infinitely usable and also costs nothing once you have it.
Every spell that does cold damage will freeze stuff it comes in contact with. It's, like, how you kill stuff. Doing cold damage to water freezes the water, too, not just if it's in the form of blood. It's like you're trying to say that doing cold damage to someone doesn't freeze them?
Mending: Come on. Break something, you have to replace it for money. Or you can Mend it. Money not spent. Things would last much longer, and you'd spend much, much less money replacing them. Not an issue for the rich, but we are talking about common people who don't have money to throw around. Since stuff lasts longer, the stuff you buy will probably also be higher quality, because you have the money to do so...or you'll buy more pieces! Everyone gets a good blanket or coat!
Endure Elements: Not all families can afford a cold weather outfit. And working in hot and sticky conditions is a total pain. Regardless, it allows you to work in circumstances where you might not be able to, in comfort. It's like being able to work at 69 degrees instead of 32 or 105. Major difference.
Detect Poison: Alcohol IS a poison, but I'm talking about stuff that's mixed with wood alcohol or such by dodgy folk, or spoilage.
Milkmaids have forearms like iron because they have to milk cows for hours/days/years on end and the exercise strengthens the arm. Unseen Servants don't get tired, so they don't need to develop forearms of iron. They need to be able to squeeze firmly. If they can't do it as fast and furious as a milkmaid, so what? They are doing it, and you are doing something else. Time. Money. You are now doing the work of two people by yourself.
And cows will get as used to the prescence of an unseen servant as readily as a human. Moreover, an unseen servant doesn't require as much room as a human, so you could put the cow into a stall a human couldn't milk from and the servant won't have the problem. It's just a formless robot, after all. Untiring.
Eberron operates with the trope that not everyone can use magic as part of its world...but far more people use magic then in other campaigns, therefore there's a lot more Low Magic then the other worlds. They even introduced the Magewright NPC class to reflect Low Magic being more common.
===============
In summary, I'm making the following points:
If the common people only had access to cantrips they could cast themselves:
1) They'd remove time spent on common labor and drudgery to a massive extent, freeing up their time best spent on other things.
2) Quality of life and health would vastly improve from increased efficiency/productivity in planting, cleaning/sorting a harvest, keeping things clean and in top condition. A great deal of physical wear and tear on people could be alleviated to a large extent, allowing time to be spent on other endeavors.
3) There would be great savings (to the common man) from being able to employ magic to rapidly and endlessly do certain things without cost ( in time, materials, labor or hired help) and from the increased lifespan/durability of goods.
4) It opens the door to better offense/defense against the magical and unnatural creatures that are in a world. Ray of Frost is more reliable then carrying a dagger or staff against such things, because it will actually hit and do damage more. Safety is EASIER in such a world.
5) People would want these benefits, and they'd teach their children at the very least how to do them.
Would it make things PERFECT? By no means. It would make things Better then not having them by an incredible amount, however.
==Aelryinth
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... and it'd still take them 5-7 years of intense study to learn how to do, during which time they're not otherwise contributing to society. Is it better in the long run? Possibly. Is it practicable? Look at how many non-college-parent families today still work their assets off to send just one kid to college, and you'll find the answer being 'probably not'.
Would it be better IRL if everyone had a college-level education in some way or form, whether that's actual university, community college, or a full-length trade apprenticeship? Absolutely. And yet somehow it doesn't get done.
You're trying to make the argument that everyone learning magic is Dumb. I posit that is a really dumb attitude.I'm making the argument that everyone in the world (somehow) raising the level of education to one where everyone can use magic is impractical and against human nature, and that even the hypothetical broad-scale application of magic would not revolutionize the world as you believe it will.
I draw comparisons to the real world because, put simply, it is the easiest way to illustrate how people behave and society functions: Most people can't fix their own car; most people can't program; most people can't operate heavy vehicles; most people can't wire up their own home.
Most people learn the most basic skills necessary in order to do their job, get paid, and go home to their family. Even if it's not very efficient (which is just as true now as it was in medieval times).
I think you are using the wrong comparisons.
Sure, most people can't fix their car. But they know the basic principles it operates on, and most importantly, they can DRIVE it. They know when something is wrong on it, and can do basic maintenance.What good is being able to fix the car if you can't drive it?
And that's the thing. You aren't learning how to fix the car. You're learning to drive it and the rules of the road...something that takes time and experience to get right, but can be learned. Someone else already made the spell/designed the car...you only need to know the basics to actually use the thing. You don't have to understand how all THE little bits work to know how to use them...you just have to know that they do.
You can learn how to wire your home in less then a day. But you will use it maybe 3-4 times in your life.
Using magic is something you would make use of EVERY SINGLE DAY.
Ditto the comparison to driving heavy machines or programming a computer.
You aren't Making Excel. You're running the spreadsheet. You aren't even necessarily making a macro, but if you used macros every day, you'd learn how to do it. You aren't making a chat program, some other genius(es) did that. You are learning how to use the chat program.
So, you're making bad comparisons. magic is something you would use every day, in personal life and professional, especially in a no or lower tech culture. It is that powerful and pervasive.
Seriously, look at all the uses I put through.
Planting stuff EFFICIENTLY. Food multiplier, labor saver.
Getting more out of the harvest.
Fixing stuff that gets broken. ANything that breaks! Holy hell!
Cleaning and organizing stuff. Like, everything!
Clearing land.
Building stuff faster. Time saver.
Hunting more successfully. Hells, shooting the crows raiding your cornfields. Better then a BB gun.
---And that's just the day to day stuff using CANTRIPS!
You'd use this every day, and that is just 'learning magic'. All the time. It would be as ubiquitous as reading and writing. You keep comparing it to stuff people don't need to do often, or only as careers.
How many times in someone's life are they going to have to learn to fix the car, versus do your laundry? What are the lifetime savings of water, detergent, and not having to buy washers, driers, fix them, or run them? How much time are you saving?
having a second pair of obedient hands in the kitchen?
I'm talking about everyday, common uses, and magic does it all. All by itself. Just learn the right cantrip!
And that's not even 1st level spells! I mean, seriously, imagine being able to break a leg and not even having to go see a doctor!
make your comparisons MAKE SENSE. Because those above don't.
==Aelryinth
... and it'd still take them 5-7 years of intense study to learn how to do, during which time they're not otherwise contributing to society. Is it better in the long run? Possibly. Is it practicable? Look at how many non-college-parent families today still work their assets off to send just one kid to college, and you'll find the answer being 'probably not'.
Would it be better IRL if everyone had a college-level education in some way or form, whether that's actual university, community college, or a full-length trade apprenticeship? Absolutely. And yet somehow it doesn't get done.
Yawn.
Who says they aren't contributing to society? You can't work and go to school? Cast practice cantrips to help out?
Are you telling me your K-12 education was a waste? Because you are. Really. that's exactly what you are saying.
College? What's that got to do with anything? We're talking about something as difficult as learning algebra or pre-calc. I'm not sending him to school to learn to be a 3rd level wizard or whatever.
And tell me, seriously. If you needed to go to earn a degree in JUST Engineering, how long would it actually have taken you? two years? Becuase everyone knows you have to take tons of courses that have nothing to do with Engineering, or any other degree, on the way there. SO much of it could be skipped.
How long would it actually take to teach a high school senior with the right background to do your job? A year? Two? Not 'be as experienced as me', not 'be as awesome as me', I mean, to DO YOUR JOB.
Not 5-7 years. That's all you want to do. We're teaching EMT's, not brain surgeons, but that's what you want to make this.
the reason people don't go to college is largely because they can't afford it. yet go overseas and there are countries which pay for all of your college education. Publicly funded. Guess what? Everyone who could would go to college. And they'd probably end up working for spare cash on the side, too.
Or helping around the house. did you do none of that growing up? Or was your education from morning to evening every day? because that is what you seem to be inferring.
A wiz/1 can be 17 years old, right?. A high schooler. Doesn't say at all how long they NEED to be trained. Sorcs can be 15. Clerics can be 16. Yet we aren't even talking that level of training. We're talking the ability to cast cantrips! That's it! Level 1's are great, but we don't NEED them.
Sure, EVERYONE can't learn magic. Those with a Wis, Int AND Cha below 10 can't learn magic. Potentially that's very few people. And as they get older, they are MORE likely to be able to learn magic, because they get smarter, wiser and more charismatic.
And they only need 1 level of XP to do it.
==Aelryinth
Rome was actually rather backwards technologically -- better weapons and armor, better horse harnesses, and other things developed in the Middle Ages (and even the Dark Ages). I think Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle is the source where I read this, but it is no longer available to me to check this for sure. What Rome had over the surrounding civilizations was organization. But when the surrounding civilizations advanced, they caught up with, closed in on, and eventually crushed Rome (and much later, Constantinople).Most fantasy realms are based on medieval Europe or a similarly functioning culture. What people forget is that the "medieval" era was a post-apocalyptic society. There had been much better technology, communication, health, and political stability in the past, but when the Roman Empire collapsed it all degenerated into what many felt was barbarism. (Not entirely nor exactly, but go with me on this)
{. . .}Depends what area of technology you're looking at. Arms and armor, certainly later civilizations were pretty much 100% ahead of what the Romans had. Norman knights vs Caesar's legions, that's a bad matchup for Julius.
That said, taking military technology as your chief metric can give a distorted picture, because - in the conflict-ridden era that followed the Roman collapse - military technology was at a particular premium. Because military power was very important and often had first dibs on resources, it was able to avoid regressing as many other technologies did and instead advance.
{. . .}
Many of the Roman achievements that were lost were ones that required long-term large-scale organization. Smaller things continued to develop during the Middle Ages, even the Dark Ages part. Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle (assuming I got the right title) made this point with things like better horse harnesses than the Romans ever had, allowing more efficient movement of goods for non-military as well as military purposes. One thing that did suffer after the fall of Rome was education, which ties in with the loss of social organization (being both a cause and an effect).
* * * * * * * *
With respect to use of low-level magic to improve everyday life, the results would probably be somewhere in between what Aelryinth and Raynuff have said above . . . IF everyone who had Intelligence 11 (or 10 for Cantrips only) could do it. Probably NOT everyone can do it just because they tipped 11 (or 10) on the Oppara Standardized Humanoid Intelligence Test scale, just as Intelligence is not as one-dimensional as the Intelligence Quotient developed on Earth would imply (probably part of the reason that this seems to have largely fallen out of favor since the 1970s). And Wizardry may have components to it that require talents other than Intelligence as well -- they just need considerable Intelligence-based training to activate them, unlike Sorcery, but if you don't have them, you won't be doing magic even if you have Einstein-level Intelligence.
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I think the answer to the title question is disarmingly simple: cut the red wire.
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Aelryinth, if you're going to show contempt to people who are giving you game rules by 'yawning', I think it might be best for you to walk away from the thread, because it's pretty obvious you don't give a crap about having an actual conversation.
Human wizards can be 17, yes - learn magic in only two years. That would, conceptually, be the best and the brightest, those with a knack for it, the INT 17+ humans - who still have to study for a minimum of two years (2d6) before they can reliably channel the energies of the universe in a specific, controlled manner. Is that 'high school age'? Sure is, but they're starting at age 15 or earlier. Can they do chores after their eight hours a day of study and practice and attempts? Sure - but by both how the game works, and by how apprenticeships traditionally work, additional time isn't going to really be a meaningful contribution. In the game, time over 8 hours spent working is at a 2:1 reduction of efficiency. In a more realistic pre-industrial apprenticeship, if you have time to work at something else, it's going to be at the Master's direction - scrubbing his floor, washing her dishes, cooking his meals, laundering her clothes. If you STILL have time to do more work, then you'll be put to work studying - unless, you know, you need a couple hours to relax and go be a kid.
Furthermore, this isn't becoming an EMT or an engineer. This SURE as hell isn't learning how to patch a wire into a socket in your house. Compared to magic, those are easy. This is disciplining your mind, will, and personality to be able to tap into the forces that can - and have - destroyed entire cities and nations, that can lay waste to an entire field in five beats of the heart. This is learning how to go to Hoover Dam, then proceed to arrange wiring to not only tap into the massive generators they've got there, but also step the power down to the point where you can use two wires to trigger a spark to only light a candle.
There are dozens of books written that have chapters telling tales of the screwups apprentices in magic manage to accomplish before becoming even marginally competent at their craft, because they can't handle the forces unleashed, or they unleash them improperly, or they do something they sure as heck weren't meaning to do. There are also plenty of stories about how many apprentices die because they tapped into the world's mystic power source improperly and basically blew their own fuse to Kingdom Come.
Me, I think you have Hogwarts in your skull, when fantasy magic is ... well, not that casual. Or easy, or safe to learn.
And if you can't learn to recognize good points made by other people - like, you know, other people have made in regards to your own points - then maybe you shouldn't be posting at all. Because again, not having a conversation if you aren't.
The premise of the question is wrong really. Worlds don't change on their own... Technology, magic, doesn't evolve on their own. Worlds rise and fall when authors deem it so.
That's the thing about being a DM. You get to be the ultimate decider. And if you can find a reason to do so, all the better.
If you want everyone to become a wizard with a bit of education, that's an authorial choice. If you decide that only those rare precious few with a Gift can wield any kind of magic, that's another authorial choice. And both are are valid!
When people create worlds it's not like they're subject to fate, It's not a "lets create a Mystra, a Rao, an Iuz etc...and whatnot and roll dice to see what happen.
Creators create backstories to justify the present they've already decided on.
So the answer to the OP's question... is not to have the desire for a technological/divine/arcane/psychic/psionic explosion in the first place. Or to have one and work out the details afterward.
That's a good way to look at it, sure. Functional, at least. :D
That's a good way to look at it, sure. Functional, at least. :D
Best way to deal with questions that really don't have a "right" answer.
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The premise of the question is wrong really. Worlds don't change on their own... Technology, magic, doesn't evolve on their own. Worlds rise and fall when authors deem it so.
That's the thing about being a DM. You get to be the ultimate decider. And if you can find a reason to do so, all the better.
If you want everyone to become a wizard with a bit of education, that's an authorial choice. If you decide that only those rare precious few with a Gift can wield any kind of magic, that's another authorial choice. And both are are valid!
When people create worlds it's not like they're subject to fate, It's not a "lets create a Mystra, a Rao, an Iuz etc...and whatnot and roll dice to see what happen.
Creators create backstories to justify the present they've already decided on.
So the answer to the OP's question... is not to have the desire for a technological/divine/arcane/psychic/psionic explosion in the first place. Or to have one and work out the details afterward.
I don't think you understood the point of my question. Suppose I made a world, with great backstory and an interesting campaign in it, which looks like your everyday fantasy+magic world-1500-s england, but some people can into magic. Then I introduce the players into this world and one of them(let's call him John) asks
-Why aren't there continuous lights on every corner? With one light archon summoning you get thousands of those, and lighting up the streets has too many benefits to not do it.
Can I say "Shut up John, stop thinking, you are ruining my world with your logic. Roll your barbarian already"? Sure, I can, but that is a very lazy answer. It breaks immersion because players don't have a good reason to believe this world would function like that. If it's a minor point players might ignore it and recover their immersion later on, but if inconsistencies like that would keep popping up it's not going to end pretty.
Can you have a world where after WW2 USSR and USA united into one nation and declared war on south africa? Sure, but you need an explanation as to why. Can you have a modern world where some people are mages who can do all sorts of things with magical wands? Sure, but you need to explain why it doesn't have any effects on the world at large. J. K. Rowling, for example, understood this.
Now, suppose you don't want to spend hours and hours trying to figure out how magic would affect society and making a consistent world, because you have 747s to build/laws to pass/people to heal. You want a quick way to fix any major effects(e.g. teleportation not being used for communication and centralised goverment control.), counting on your GM powers to fix any minor inconsistencies on the spot.
How would you do that?
I hope this clarifies my question a little.
If you establish that magic also needs fuel, you eliminate all problems of magic creating "perpetual machines".
Infinite magic is stupid anyway.
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So basically we are derailing the thread, maybe take your debate over watering fields to private messages?
Basically magic can keep tech from advancing because as others have stated, a Wizard is not going to allow their power to be usurped by tech. They will not allow someone without their formal training to wield power like theirs.
Sorcerers might not care all that much as they could use tech to amplify their power some how.
Divine casters could easily label it as heretical and have the general populace hunt down the creators of these machines and destroy them.
All in all the Magic wielders of your world will keep tech in line.
The real only place that tech has taken off without it being extraterrestrial is Alkenstar as the Dwarves have a mind for it in Galorian.
They may also be able to develop a more mundane medical system instead of relying on Clerics. They could find Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in trees and be able to refine it for a pain killer.
Aelryinth, if you're going to show contempt to people who are giving you game rules by 'yawning', I think it might be best for you to walk away from the thread, because it's pretty obvious you don't give a crap about having an actual conversation.
Human wizards can be 17, yes - learn magic in only two years. That would, conceptually, be the best and the brightest, those with a knack for it, the INT 17+ humans - who still have to study for a minimum of two years (2d6) before they can reliably channel the energies of the universe in a specific, controlled manner. Is that 'high school age'? Sure is, but they're starting at age 15 or earlier. Can they do chores after their eight hours a day of study and practice and attempts? Sure - but by both how the game works, and by how apprenticeships traditionally work, additional time isn't going to really be a meaningful contribution. In the game, time over 8 hours spent working is at a 2:1 reduction of efficiency. In a more realistic pre-industrial apprenticeship, if you have time to work at something else, it's going to be at the Master's direction - scrubbing his floor, washing her dishes, cooking his meals, laundering her clothes. If you STILL have time to do more work, then you'll be put to work studying - unless, you know, you need a couple hours to relax and go be a kid.
Furthermore, this isn't becoming an EMT or an engineer. This SURE as hell isn't learning how to patch a wire into a socket in your house. Compared to magic, those are easy. This is disciplining your mind, will, and personality to be able to tap into the forces that can - and have - destroyed entire cities and nations, that can lay waste to an entire field in five beats of the heart. This is learning how to go to Hoover Dam, then proceed to arrange wiring to not only tap into the massive generators they've got there, but also step the power down to the point where you can use two wires to trigger a spark to only light a candle.
There are dozens...
Wyrm, you're filling in rules where none exist again. That's why I yawned. You're doing it repeatedly.
The rules for age do NOT say how long someone needs to be educated to be a wizard. They give the Starting Age.
That's it.
He could have started his training at 3 years old.
He could have started last year.
You are filling in rules where none exist. Please don't do that, and try to claim it is the rules and the standard to base the game on. Heck, the iconic wizard started his training at over 30, and we have no idea how long he was at it.
If you're doing an apprenticeship and doing your master's drudge work, guess what? You're contributing to society. Just like a maid, butler, manservant, scribe, and other paid flunky would do. You're WORKING for your training. You're doing stuff so he doesn't have to. labor for training, classic system.
You're shooting yourself in the foot here.
You're also trying to throw in the trope of 'apprentice screws up fantastically learning magic.'
There's no rules for that, either. If all you want to do is learn cantrips, why are you trying to replicate a disaster miscasting fireball or something?
It's a trope, just like 'only the few can learn magic' is a trope, and you're claiming its the standard again, when No, that's not part of the rules, either, so quit trying to make it a standard.
You're also trying to claim that being a level 1 wizard is like being an extremely advanced engineer.
How many ranks of Profession: Engineer would your guy at Hoover Dam need? 2? 3? Maybe a Skill Focus? Knows Math (flow dynamics), Architecture, hydrodynamics, Physics, mechanical drawing? Diplomat or Intimidation to use as a boss guy? Meteorology (weather having huge effect on water levels)? He's probably got Int 13-15, and been at his job for years, above and beyond his initial training, so mental stat raises?
Guess what. Learning to be a wizard requires Int 10 for cantrips. And MAYBE one Rank of Spellcraft.
That's it.
No Knowledge (arcane). No Profession (anything). You can learn to scribe scrolls without any ranks in Prof: Scribe. Technically, you don't even need to read or write (but the game assumes you can).
NONE of that is required. You're piling pre-requisites on basic skills and trying to make it a standard.
Dial it back. LOOK at what is required to be a level 1 wizard in PF. NOT what is required to be level 6 or 10 or 18.
You need to be 17 years old.
You need an Int of 10 to learn cantrips.
You get a rank of Concentration and Spellcraft.
And...that's it. Reading/Writing a plus, but 'Spellcraft' is basically an art as much as a language, so it's not a class requirement. You're making magic scrolls and putting spells in your book, not translating English to Chinese.
You don't even get the +3 for a class skill, because it's not important and not a 'Skill'.
Concentration isn't even used unless you're casting Under Pressure!
You're trying to say a fresh level 1 wizard is the equivalent of the senior engineer at a major engineering project, and I'm telling you he's the intern just out of high school who got through pre-calc and physics and mechanical drawing there, and is competent enough to throw a lever and know what a megawatt is and that spinning turbines thru a magnetic field generates electricity and can follow instructions and slowly understand a schematic.
Because you don't put average intelligence 17 year olds with no experience and only basic knowledge of their trade in positions of hard merit at the Hoover Dam. You put the Int 16+ Experts with Skill Focus, and 3-4 Ranks in knowledge and Professions that complement one another, hard-earned over the years.
But that what's you're telling us is the equivalent.
Bad examples are bad examples.
Look at what a level 1 Wizard IS, not the tropes attached to him. And then consider all we want is the ability to make CANTRIPS. Which is like saying all we want is the ability to pass Physics or Chemistry in our junior/senior year in high school.
==Aelryinth
The premise of the question is wrong really. Worlds don't change on their own... Technology, magic, doesn't evolve on their own. Worlds rise and fall when authors deem it so.
That's the thing about being a DM. You get to be the ultimate decider. And if you can find a reason to do so, all the better.
If you want everyone to become a wizard with a bit of education, that's an authorial choice. If you decide that only those rare precious few with a Gift can wield any kind of magic, that's another authorial choice. And both are are valid!
When people create worlds it's not like they're subject to fate, It's not a "lets create a Mystra, a Rao, an Iuz etc...and whatnot and roll dice to see what happen.
Creators create backstories to justify the present they've already decided on.
So the answer to the OP's question... is not to have the desire for a technological/divine/arcane/psychic/psionic explosion in the first place. Or to have one and work out the details afterward.
I don't think you understood the point of my question. Suppose I made a world, with great backstory and an interesting campaign in it, which looks like your everyday fantasy+magic world-1500-s england, but some people can into magic. Then I introduce the players into this world and one of them(let's call him John) asks
-Why aren't there continuous lights on every corner? With one light archon summoning you get thousands of those, and lighting up the streets has too many benefits to not do it.
Can I say "Shut up John, stop thinking, you are ruining my world with your logic. Roll your barbarian already"? Sure, I can, but that is a very lazy answer. It breaks immersion because players don't have a good reason to believe this world would function like that. If it's a minor point players might ignore it and recover their immersion later on, but if inconsistencies like that would keep popping up it's not going to end pretty.
Can you have a world where after WW2 USSR...
the first rule is no infinite magic.
This in itself solves a LOT of the cantrip problem. If you can only use 3 cantrips a day for 1 round each use, Prestidigitation becomes helpful but not a society changer.
Removing at-will spell abilities from summoned/Called creatures does the same. Infinite use Cont Light is the problem, NOT Continual Light (which, when cast, actually has a cost to it which would slow the process down.)
The second rule is having enough low Magic to discourage development of tech.
The third rule is tech is hostile enough to magic to 'break' or make difficult some key developments. Unstable chemistry, uncontrollable electricity, and combusting gunpowder/fuel are three easy ones that will put the breaks on advancing tech.
The fourth is that forces conspire against the advance of technology, ranging from fearful wizards to outsiders, to gods, and simply remove key elements so that tech discoveries fade away, meaning the wheel is continually reinvented, instead of being improved upon in many ways.
the fifth is that magic interacts with tech, and at a certain level, tech becomes 'alive', dangerous, and hostile, and so nobody advances it above a specific level without Bad Things happening to them at the hands of their own discoveries.
Them's the background ways to control tech in your campaign.
----------------------------
And it's not a water discussion, it's how having access to magic on a broad, low scale would change society and the world.
Mostly, this is because magic is tech. Having access to more magic is exactly like having access to more tech. The difference is, YOU are the technology, not your iPhone.
You don't have vacuum cleaners or Mr. Clean, you have Prestidigitation.
You don't have a freezer, you have Ray of Frost and buckets of water.
You don't have fixit books and superglue, you have Mending.
You don't have Dishwashers and Washing Machines, you have Prestidigitation.
You don't have electricity, you have magic.
You don't have movies, you have simple illusions a person casts.
You don't have Tasers, you have Daze.
You don't have sprinklers and garden hoses, you have Drench.
You don't have microwaves, you have Prestidigitation.
YOU are the technology.
===Aelryinth
That's a fair point TheJeff, but that also means that the answer to Klara's streetlamp problem is, "Magic just isn't that accessible."
Aelrynth, your level 1 Wizard to high school graduate equivalency seems very setting specific; I'm not saying your wrong, but it seems entirely dependent on the availability of magical education in the setting. If you're dealing with a preindustrial setting without mass communication or public education, getting to the level of a high school graduate (well, before No Child Left Behind, BURN!) might well be a lifelong pursuit.
In my settings, whether it be Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, or Dungeon World, I make magic a bit different. Magic always has a cost and is either unpredictable or requires an immense amount of discipline to use. Arcane magic always has a chance to have a random effect, whether it be weal or woe. Divine magic requires you to have zealous faith in your deity and church, lest you get Excommunicated. Inner magic (my version of psychic, chi, and occultism rolled together) requires one to be incredibly disciplined and an aesthetic, and wavering from that makes them lose access to that power. In addition, all magic has a chance of corrupting the user from overuse. So that in itself is a self limiting ability, both psychological and physical, for magic to not jump to magitech. I still have cities that have some fantastic magical elements to it, but nowhere near the level of Eberron.
Second is that in my settings, magic and technology do not get along very well. At least, technology higher than, say, Renaissance. It's subjective, but usually the guidelines are, the more moving parts and complexity it has, the more of a chance magic won't like it. To bind magic to higher technological devices requires giving the device some semblance of sentience, by binding a soul into it and putting some of your life force into it. The more advanced the tech, the greater the price. So, mages aren't too keen about self-sacrificing themselves to have advanced, magic tech. And most spirits aren't too keen with being bound into an M16 to make it a +1 flaming M16 ;)
Also, from a political point of view, technology evens the playing field between mundane and mage. Mages are powerful and like being in charge, whether directly or in an advisory role. More technology means that those mundane peasants can revolt against their magocracy and mages don't want that! So most technological advances are scrutinized by their governments and if they find it too threatening, are quietly removed.
i do similar things.
For...
I like this idea a lot. I may have to snag this if I run a more contemporary fantasy game and still want swords.
Wyrm,
You poo-pooed Spark, and I forgot to address it.
Do you have any idea how important it is to be able to start a fire? Sure, we're used to matches and lighters. But, before then, all you had was flint and steel.
Starting a fire with flint and steel is a PITA. It's nigh impossible in damp terrain, to the extent people have to carry around their own dried tinder (or the ads that came with the Sunday paper)!
So, here's a challenge. Put on some sweats, walk outside.
Now, start a fire. Hopefully you're in an area where it's cold and damp, so you've got incentive.
You've got no flint, no steel, aren't carrying tinder, no magnifying glass.
Start a fire.
Learn how time-consuming and hard it is, especially when it's cold and wet and you're shivering and you need to cook that squirrel you very luckily brained with a thrown rock. Or, like, you can eat it raw.
Now, realize you might have to do it again in the morning. And then tomorrow. And the day after that. and the day after that. For the rest of your life.
Then consider if you could just scrape together some bark and fallen twigs, throw Sparks on it for a minute, and you'd have a fire going. To cook the six pigeons you took down with Ray of Frost cleanly.
The ability to start a fire on command is revolutionary. It's basically the foundation of society - warmth and light on command. Saves time, money, energy, promotes health by cooking food.
It would be hugely helpful to the average commoner in low tech societies. ESPECIALLY if you don't have alchemists around selling tindertwigs.
And you can ignite that flask of oil you just splashed on the orc's log fort without having a torch lit and attracting attention, too, or insta-light a torch for illumination and a weapon all at once.
==Aelryinth
That's a fair point TheJeff, but that also means that the answer to Klara's streetlamp problem is, "Magic just isn't that accessible."
Aelrynth, your level 1 Wizard to high school graduate equivalency seems very setting specific; I'm not saying your wrong, but it seems entirely dependent on the availability of magical education in the setting. If you're dealing with a preindustrial setting without mass communication or public education, getting to the level of a high school graduate (well, before No Child Left Behind, BURN!) might well be a lifelong pursuit.
I'm just saying 'those are the rules'.
I.e. this is what is possible without resorting to house rules changing things.
Sure, society may not have advanced to that stage. I'm not saying it hasn't.
But I'm also saying that teaching everyone who could use magic TO use simple magic is very, very easy within the rules.
And furthermore, that people would WANT to learn it, simply because of the sheer amount of impact it would have on their lives. The economic and quality of life benefits are just too much to ignore.
it's like introducing electricity to homes. Nobody who could get it refuses it, there's just too much benefit to it.
A setting where that is followed would be 'realistic', not 'historical'. And you don't even need 'public' education. It could be easily passed down from parents to children, just like a lot of knowledge was in the old days.
remember, all you want is basic cantrips, and you need to teach one rank in spellcraft and one in concentration. But it's enough to change the world.
==Aelryinth
Again, NPCs don't gain XP. XP is a reward specifically for player characters or for NPCs that the GM actually wants to be tracking XP for (usually because they're cohorts or other close NPC allies to the PCs).
Most folks are 1st level, or reach an arbitrary level that they never go past.
Anyways, "all NPCs should be L1 commoners so that they're 1st level as soon as possible and then take a wizard level for their 2nd level" ignores that most NPCs are L1 commoners for their entire lives.
Frankly, "by RAW everyone should be a wizard!" is an issue that strikes me as a purely self-inflicted problem.
Edit: Aside - keep in mind that water created by create water that isn't specifically consumed in one day disappears.
So you're not going to have any luck actually improving an area's water table. You're only going to be able to keep plants alive in the areas where you have a cleric/druid/whatever to personally attend to them every day.
(Incidentally, trying to get rid of the desert sounds like a good way to piss off the death worms. Always keep in mind that the environment in a D&D-ish world can be extremely hostile, and it fights back in ways that ordinary people can't stand up to.)
Actually, NPC's are level 1-3 for most of their lives. Level 1 assumes you just became an adult and never become better at anything for your entire life. That's not right. If so, people would never get better at anything.
So, yeah,, NPC's are assumed to advance over time. Just nothing like PC's do. The vast majority never break level 3, I'll grant you that.
However...magic is the one thing in the game where you can Clearly and Precisely see the benefits of leveling. You can't really 'see' an improvement in BAB or hit points. You CAN see more spells in memory. You CAN see your spells reaching further, more magic missiles. You CAN tell when a new spell level opens up.
So, if you could teach cantrips, you're also going to have a LOT more people wanting to level up and learn more spells.
===========
Created Water can't be stored, true. But using it to water acreage isn't storing it. Besides, the Drench cantrip is more precise and better for such.
As noted, could care less about the desert scenario. That sort of thing is basically making the cleric a slave to the farmers. Won't fly. It's pure theorycraft that would never translate to the real world. Even with a decanter, the effect would be limited, just by the environment.
Now, fighting off the effects of a drought to stabilize the farming cycle? Great thing to do, doesn't require 8 hours of time every day for the rest of the cleric's life.
As for the environment...deserts tend to treasure what green and the oasis that they have. Making small chunks of the desert bloom likely won't offend it at all. Submerging it under an ocean, that's a different story. It's all a matter of scale.
==Aelryinth
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Who says they aren't contributing to society? You can't work and go to school?
Not really, not to the extent that youths were historically expected to work. Rural schools, up until the 1800s, timed their vacation to coincide with the busy periods on farms because sitting in school was preventing kids from doing useful work.
Are you telling me your K-12 education was a waste? Because you are. Really. that's exactly what you are saying.
College? What's that got to do with anything? We're talking about something as difficult as learning algebra or pre-calc.
...
the reason people don't go to college is largely because they can't afford it.
Bingo. Education costs money. Nowadays K-12 education is free – and a lot of poor kids still end up with a really shoddy education because they need to do actual work for their family (from taking care of siblings to paid jobs as teens) which prevents them from having the time or energy to focus on school. Historically, even this basic level of education cost the family money. Farmers did not have the money or the time to send their kids to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic when those kids could be helping to clear the fields or watch their infant siblings. (You mentioned Endure Elements being useful if you can't afford cold weather clothes, but what kind of family can afford a spellbook and not a coat?) And if we're talking about a traditional labour-for-training apprenticeship, those were historically limited by your social connections. A farmer's kid didn't have a good shot of being apprenticed to a blacksmith. Even if they did, the family would be missing strong arms that were needed on the farm. So while learning blacksmithing would be really useful - more useful than reading, writing, and arithmetic - it still wouldn't be accessible to most commoners.
You're trying to make the argument that everyone learning magic is Dumb. I posit that is a really dumb attitude.
Not at all. Just that the people who do learn magic are likely to be those who are already privileged, those who have the option to make a long-term investment. Merchants and lords will be able to give their children a magical education. Those children will find good use both out of the direct use of minor spells (Comprehend Languages is so much more useful when you'll travel farther from home than the nearest big market) and out of the social leverage that you might get from being a graduate of the such-and-such magical academy or a priest of Abadar.
And while it's possible for the wealthy to decide to give those beneath them a boost in order to raise overall standard of living, I think you'll find many more historical examples where those on the top want to continue to be on the top, even if they could make things a little better for themselves by evening out the field.
So you'll have a bunch of casters coming out of the upper class, a few rare talented and lucky commoners able to learn proper spellcraft by attracting a powerful patron (whether a mortal financier or a supernatural mentor), a few wisemen/women adepts in a village, and another handful able to use one or two cantrips once per day (as per Arcane Dabbler). But the prevalence of education in the actual middle ages does not lead me to think that magical education would be widespread enough for cantrips to become a major presence in the average commoner's household.
Actually, I didn't pooh-pooh spark; I indicated the issues required to be able to, with your mind and a couple of crutches, manipulate a fundamental force of the universe. You're saying that there are no rules for how long it takes you to learn magic; I'm saying that it's at the very least implied by the difference in starting ages. If you want to get even more actually realistic about it, a traditional apprenticeships start around age 10 - so a human wizard, minimum starting age of 17, starts his apprenticeship at 10 and studies for at least 7 years before he can reliably and safely cast cantrips and first level spells.
The problem, Aelryinth, is that you're refusing to acknowledge anyone else's good information. 'You're making stuff up, you're boring, stories are for chumps' is what you're claiming, when, well - it just ain't necessarily true, and the stuff that I and other people are offering simply isn't random, it has deep background to it. Enh. You have good points, but you don't acknowledge any others.
Klara: The real answer is relative cost, as well as all the things that have been brought up in regards to 'the time it takes to learn magic'.
First, magic is expensive. If 1sp is equivalent to a modern US dollar (which it kind of is), and a continual light costs 100gp, then you're looking at $1,000 to pay for one light - just one. If your mages are donating them, then it's 'only' $500 - but the problem lies in the fact that there is (currently) no way to lower this cost. If a spell requires 10,000gp worth of diamond dust to cast, unless you (as GM) allow successful experimentation in cost reduction and multiple/mass manufacturing, it's always going to require 10,000gp worth of diamond dust to cast. Magic and magic items will always have a huge economic impact and require individual crafting - witness the amount of money I related in regards to a simple stream created by decanters of endless water. Magic items and magic, especially permanent magic, have a very serious monetary cost - buying three of those decanters takes the same amount of money as funding a war ship. That +1 weapon is the cost-equivalent of a manor house. So while lighting your streets with continual light may seem easy and be useful in the long run, and it may last virtually forever, but you're spending at least 50gp (in ruby dust) for each one, placing the, what - every 60' (20' normal light, 20' dim light overlap?) or 100' (40' pools, with 20' of technical darkness between them) in your streets. The main part of London in 1666 was about 3 miles long and 2 miles wide; a mile is 5280', so just for one 3-mile-long street, you need 53 everburning torches, at a cost of 2,650gp. For one street. It's a very, very expensive prospect, in comparison to 53cp a night. Oh, it'll pay for itself in 13.7 years, but ... that's 13.7 years down the road.
Second, learning time. Until about the 1940s, apprenticeships were started at age 10-14. If you go by the 'starting age' as being the earliest point at which the student's master says 'okay, you've learned enough, you can go out into the world', then magic requires a minimum of 7 years of study, from age 10. Check your histories, and there is a LOT of work that 'children' during that age are doing - sure, it's scutwork, sweeping floors, carrying stuff, basic childcare, or doing the actual planting of the seeds - but it frees up the adult to do more productive things - directing the ox pulling the plow, making jellies to sell, do precision or artistic carving, that sort of thing. So that's where your 'productivity loss' is in this case. Unless that productivity can be returned to the family, or isn't needed - traditionally, they already have enough kids, this one isn't needed - or else they're making the sacrifice in order to get the kid into a higher social and earning class, then it simply isn't going to be able to happen. Until and unless there's an agrarian revolution (as Raynulf described), the children are needed more at home on the farm than they are entering a long-term trade. To be fair, most trades are about this, though other trades are somewhat faster; 10 to start learning, marriageable at age 14-15, but you might still be living with one set of parents or the other until you can get some more experience under your belt. Simply put, though, it's easy enough to explain why 'everyone can learn magic' is a non-starter. Add in the fact that if you're going to learn magic and apply it to a craft, you have to learn the craft as well, and you have 10+ years in which you're learning the trades.
So there you go - massive immediate expense and extensive time requirement to learn.
A third level spell, so a fifth level caster, so five uses of SLA per summoning. IF you can convince the Archon that it is in the best interests of both Order and Good for it to be giving what amounts to free light forever to a group of mortals.
Me, while I can kind of see it, I as a GM certainly wouldn't permit it. Striving towards accomplishments is a necessary part of mortal existence, etc. etc. Work to light your own damn streets, buddy. ;)
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Yeah, those mortals should all suffer and die in the darkness of the night. I'm Lawful Good, by the way.
Just had a thought: Pathfinder conversions of the following monsters from WarCraft III/TFT would go a LONG way towards preventing a Magitech Revolution, and would also conveniently result in less complaints about Caster-Martial Disparity:
Faerie Dragon (very different from the D&D/Pathfinder Faerie Dragon; you especially want a conversion of the Mana Flare ability)
Destroyer (you want conversions of both the Devour Magic and Orb of Annihilation abilities)
Fel Stalker and Fel Ravager (scroll down past the basic Fel Beast; you want a conversion of the Mana Burn ability on the Fel Stalker and conversions of both the Devour Magic and Black Arrow abilities on the Fel Ravager)
THOSE monsters will make mortals suffer and die in the darkness of the night . . . Or at any other time of day. And they're not Lawful Good, by the way.
Ironically, the WarCraft universe (even before World of WarCraft) has a substantial amount of technology and magitech.
A third level spell, so a fifth level caster, so five uses of SLA per summoning. IF you can convince the Archon that it is in the best interests of both Order and Good for it to be giving what amounts to free light forever to a group of mortals.
Me, while I can kind of see it, I as a GM certainly wouldn't permit it. Striving towards accomplishments is a necessary part of mortal existence, etc. etc. Work to light your own damn streets, buddy. ;)
For the 3rd time on this thread, it's a CALLED Archon.
a summoned Archon's continual light will vanish with it as soon as the summoning spell duration expires.
A Called Archon is around for...well, however. Any 'price' needed to be paid could be done by selling Continual Light spells for 1 gp each. For 1 SILVER apiece.
Infinite Light is infinite light. It would have the same revolutionary effect as infinite cantrips can.
And bringing light to the darkness is one of the greatest goods you can accomplish. Furthers quality of life, heightens security, frees men from the demands of sunlight.
It's not the best sort of light. You'll still need to find other sources. But denying people light when you can give it away for nothing, and it does so much?
That's like, not being Good or charitable in the slightest. Bad argument from a logic point.
From a handwave 'because I don't want cities lit up' standpoint, sure.
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Apprenticeship was, traditionally, as much about getting the free labor for the master as it was for the learning.
Actually TEACHING someone a trade can be done very quickly if that is all you are doing. And we're talking about teaching, not wringing as much labor out of a kid as necessary.
I mean, seriously, go learn a trade. You think it will take you seven years to learn the basic (i.e. 1 rank) elements of a trade from 200 years ago at 1 rank? I can probably say confidently that a kid coming out of high school probably knows more about chemistry then they did 100 years ago. YOu won't be a master, but we don't want a master...we want ONE RANK.
And since we'd be doing this on a large scale, that's where the standard would be. You're trying to move it to the trope of Master-Apprentice used at the CURRENT stage to teach mages. Heck, you're not even acknowledging the university model for elite wizards, dumbed down to the hedge level for non-elite wizards, which would naturally evolve!
And the argument for the trade-off between labor and education is exactly the same one made for all forms of public education. Yet, as tech (magic) improves and time is freed up, it keeps moving more and more in that direction. It's relentless that way. You keep saying it won't happen...except it already did.
You're also thinking that farmers and commoners can't plan for the long term. I think you're ignoring the fact that they didn't have all our distractions, and planned for GENERATIONS of their family to work the land, agreements that lasted across decades and even centuries.
Just farm families. so, I think you are absolutely Wrong. And any cunning elder could see that if the little people had magic, they'd have more power. The whole class struggle thing intensifies when you start adding tech (magic) to the mix, and it comes to fruition as the vast numbers outweigh the few wealthy, when all you have to do is TEACH and Learn...and that can be cheap.
The age example STILL falls down flat. You're simply positing a beginning point that doesn't exist, you're ignoring relative Intelligence, and also ignoring the labor vs teaching ratio. In short, you're just throwing something out there to look good, and I'm not buying it.
The rules say 17 or older. Nothing about time. Reasonably, an older student is more mature, learns things faster...that is reality. WHEN they started studies is completely unknown, and largely irrelevant next to talent and time spent learning. Remember, we want ONE RANK. Not mastery. We want Eternal Apprentices.
The 'poor' example falls down flat, too. You can have a communal family spellbook, or master one for the students. If magic is more common, the cost of teaching it will drop...it's an economic reality. Spellbooks last forever, and the amount of time and energy they save is more then worth the investment. The scutwork the kids didn't do by going to school didn't bankrupt the farmers anywhere...it got done regardless, time wasn't wasted, things had to happen, and the doomsaying about child labor not being available HELPED the whole wages cycle by removing underpaid, unappreciated labor from the pool, raising the Quality of Life for a LOT of mature workers and their families (since the labor the kids did was never compensated fairly).
Seriously, you're saying kids couldn't get their chores done and go to school. There's centuries of evidence proving you are wrong. And removing kids from the labor pool of employment actually helps the job situation and transfers wealth down by shrinking the labor pool.
I mean, you're arguing in favor of child labor. That's going to fail however you look at it.
As for those who don't get a 'good' education under the k-12 system...no system is perfect. There will always be those who can't cut the mustard, and lousy home lives and lack of motivation are key there, too. Likewise, the wealthy will always get the best education because they can afford it. The rich/poor wealth divide IS a problem, always has been, but it is also something that has been overcome for the majority of people in first and second world countries. Tech (magic) is a wonderful thing.
But the fact is, you seem to be arguing that poor people don't want a better life; can't see the value of an education clearly; and won't act on their desires for a better life for themselves and their offspring. Whereas reality has proven the opposite billions of times over.
In a magical world, that's learning how to use magic. IN a tech world, that's learning how to use tech.
And that's why I'm not taking your arguments too seriously. You're trying to argue that things that history has proven will happen, won't happen. Moreover, that they won't even work, despite the fact that they did.
all you have to do is sub magic for technology, realize that PEOPLE are the technology in a magical world, and things will happen.
==Aelryinth
It's been mentioned a couple of times. Eberron is all over this discussion even when it's not directly spoken of. I used to have a problem with Eberron but eventually realized my problem was only with the way it is presented "officially". Officially that campaign world doesn't make any more sense than any other world even though it's express reason for existing is that it claims to be far more sensible*.
As for the OP - Mostly I agree with Aelryinth, e.g. he said, in part, "So Golarion is basically based on a reality which exists in defiance of what real circumstances would drive people to do."
The conversation in this thread between Tryn and The Wyrm Ouroboros says much the same. Or the apt comment by Aelryinth "You are ignoring the fact that under the rules, Paizo is IGNORING the fact that magic breaks the economy." Or what thejeff says, "Do you want magic to be rarer? Then handwave a reason for it to be rarer."
And it all boils down to the warning issued way up thread by bugleyman Mon, Dec 21, 2015, 12:17 pm
I'll echo some other comments...don't do this to yourself. The deeper you look and more informed you become, the less sense things will make, until eventually you can't ignore the blatantly schizophrenic nature of the implied setting. You'll be much happier if you just hand-wave magic and move on.If that's TL/DR then the one-sentence summary by thejeff is, "Mostly there's a lot left unsaid, because the rules are designed to support a game about adventuring, not a world simulation.
* Sorry KB but Eberron<>Most Logical Campaign Setting
Exactamundo.
Ignore logic and go with the rules, don't look deep, or it'll break...and your players can be the one to break it.
==Aelryinth
Ignore logic and go with the rules, don't look deep, or it'll break...and your players can be the one to break it.
That's absolutely right. If you actively enable your players to break the world, they can be the ones to break it. You had no responsibility at all for the world you defined.
Ignore logic and go with the rules, don't look deep, or it'll break...and your players can be the one to break it.
That's absolutely right. If you actively enable your players to break the world, they can be the ones to break it. You had no responsibility at all for the world you defined.
If you're saying that players can break the world just by using the hard rules and you not using GM fiat to stop them, I agree with you.
If you think a GM can stop them from breaking the world just by resorting to the published rules...You're mistaken.
Breaking any suspension of disbelief for an economy is very, very easy with magic. Golarion's economy and people are not realistic at all.
==Aelryinth