How do you keep a fantasy setting from a technological explosion?


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A friend of mine asked me this question a couple of days ago, and so far, I don't have a good answer.

Wikipedia tells us that, in real life, industrial revolution "included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of water power, the increasing use of steam power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the factory system."

Now, suppose you are a 14-th century England with no magic, and you suddenly got a bunch of wizards(let's say 10 of them, each at lv 12). Just your ordinary wizards without any particularily unusual spells in their spellbooks. What can they do to initiate their own industrial revolution?

Well, for starters, they can just make pure iron. Wall of Iron spell makes a 5ft sq/level , 1/4 inch/level thick wall of, well, iron. That is 16.7 metric tons(5*5 square=25 square feet=2.32sq meters; 3 inch=0.0762 meters;density of iron=7.87 tons/cubic meter; 2.32*0.0762*12*7870=16.7 metric tons) of iron for your average 12 lv wizard, per one cast of the spell. And they can cast 2 of those per day(3 with a high INT score), which brings them to 33.4 tons per day minimum. Internet tells me that british iron production in 1700 was 12,000 metric tonnes a year, or 32 tons per day, so 10 wizards can outproduce a country without even trying much.

Secondly, they can eschew machine tools. Who needs machine tools when you have Fabricate? Transmute all that iron you just made into whatever is made of iron. Pots, nails, I-beams...Sky is the limit, really. And it only takes a minute to turn all that iron you produced with your wall of iron into finished products.

Next, why don't we ruin agricultural sector while we are at it? For example, we can make a tractor. Be it a construct, an actual vehicle with a Wondrous Item for an engine or something else, point is, Wizard can make it happen. And it probably wouldn't cost a stupendous ammount of money to do so. Now your agriculture is incredibly efficient, and you don't even have to waste money on gas.

Did I already mention a Wondrous item in place of the engine? I am pretty sure that there are a thousand ways to make Perpetuum Mobile with magic for less than 10000 gold. Make a permanent shocking grasp spell to get a perfect electricity generator for example, it will cost you ~1k gold. Same with more "mechanical" powersources.

I might well be missing some other potential exploits, but the general idea is clear-if you just add Wizards into a medievil setting, things aren't going to stay the same for long. Something is going to change radically, to the point where you won't be able to recognise the world.

Now, suppose you wanted to keep the tech level stable, AND have wizards. For that, you would need some counterbalance to magic, something that would slow down the progress of society back to normal levels. What do you think that might be?


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You're trying to apply reason to magic. That never ends well. Just remember, it's magic. It doesn't have to make sense.


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God/Outsider fiat. Only way to stop people from being sentient. Technology Should develop over time, the best way to deal with wanting the tech level in one state is to simply play your game during whatever time period that had that tech in the setting.


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There are a lot of uses of magic that would cause an industrial revolution type of effect. If you don't want that to happen, you either need to handwave it (the most common response) or you would have to patch up a lot of edge cases where wizards produce infinite energy/labor/whatever.

A few things may not actually be as big a problem as you might think. Whatever you're doing has to compete with slave and peasant labor, which was a big reason the industrial revolution didn't take off for so long in real life. When the minimum wage is the equivalent of a dollar a day or less, it is hard for capital investments to compete with the labor pool. Some of the more egregious pathfinder edge cases would still do this, but there is a bunch of stuff that just becomes cheaper to hire peasants or buy people to do.

Also, the physics knowledge to use a shocking grasp trap to do useful things doesn't exist, so it doesn't actually help to make one. It isn't clear what you would use an I-beam for, or why that shape is useful. Some stuff is so dead obviously better done with magic that it would always happen that way (the wall of iron example is a good one), but there are a lot of potential abuses that look pretty obvious to a modern human that wouldn't necessarily be obvious to someone with a pre-newtonian level of physics knowledge.


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I hit on a few of these concerns in Fantastic Technology, and one of the ways I dealt with it is... yeah, it'll go crazy. You'll see the last few centuries of real-world technological development come around in a decade or two. It's inescapable unless you make the consequences of doing so -- war, divine retribution, outsider or precursor intervention -- greater than the benefits.

For a world like Golarion, you have precursor intervention baked into the setting: Azlant went nuts and got an asteroid in the face.


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There's an Inevitable for that.


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Psychological reasons would probably be your best bet (though I doubt you're ever going to come up with a good reason - with the ability to break the laws of thermodynamics, things would change markedly, pretty quickly. It's best not to look too hard at 'what would the world be like if...' scenarios - competition amongst the churches would probably drive the price of divine magic down way below where it is by the book, unless in your world the clerics of the setting are all using up all their spells by morning teatime...).

1. You could postulate that the societal tendencies which hold progress back (conservatism, lack of inventiveness, fear of the unknown...) are more pronounced in the population. So it would just take them longer to make the same leaps we did (perhaps the same can explain Golarion's enormous timescale, or why gun-technology isn't everywhere).

2. Perhaps society as a whole is similar to ours, but there's something aobut the psychological makeup that goes into being talented with magic - so wizards could be dramatic catalysts for technological change but they're too busy doing what they consider to be far more important, wizardly things in towers with musty tomes.


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The Wizards (not to mention divine types that would feel endangered by a Magitech revolution) themselves might prevent it, by taking severe measures to keep others from getting hold of what gives them their edge over others (think our intellectual property system, but far worse, and in particular with no sunset clauses at all). Also, even if researchable by science, the nature of magic seems to go against the grain of automated mass production, so mass production tends to require mass hiring of talented spellcasters, which would be possible but would never get cheap except in a situation of abject (and very Infernally crafted) slavery . . . Something like Azlant and Thassilon probably had, and like Cheliax would like to set up, but apparently doesn't have the competence to pull off . . . Yet.


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"Just your ordinary wizards"...when they are level 12.

This is one of those background details people forget because NPCs tend to get leveled to whatever makes them relevant to the moment... most people are level 1 to level 3 commoners.

The key reason why mages don't take off on a revolution? Cause there are barely any of them with anything more than level 2 spells. And I would call that a 'bachelor's degree'. For a 'master's degree', I would say they would be level 5 when they have access to the various crafting feats.

Simply put- why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles. And that alone would be enough that they would be able to live in a mansion with servants compared to the normal person. Getting to level 5 gives you a fairly comfortable lifestyle- the vast majority would stop there.

So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'. Oh, sure- you have a few running about, making flying cities. But those are viewed as rare geniuses. Never enough of a population to do much more than make a few marvels here and there. Nothing to massively change the quality of life on a large scale.

The primary difference between magic and technology is that magic is much more focused on internal mastery, rather than the practice of using external forces that have consistant cause and effect. With cars, anyone can do basic upkeep and repairs with a bit of practice. You need high level education in order to repair a +1 sword, since it needs interal processes and such that grant mastery over the arcane forces involved.


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This one's easy: Wizards have better things to do.

You could argue that Einstein (or Edison or Franklin or DaVinci) could have used their genius to industrialize (or perhaps in Einstein's case, vastly improve industrialization) for the sake of churning out super machines and making vast products using their genius to mass produce cool stuff. In fact, I think they were smart enough to do that very thing.

But they didn't want to. They had better things to do.

So these ten hypothetical mid-level wizards appear in Europe. Instead of spending their days making pots and pans out of Walls of Iron, they spend their days seeking Excalibur and the Holy Grail and the Fountain of Youth and any other fascinating quest (you know, adventuring) and when not doing that, they're researching new spells and practicing/training for their next level, building their tower, hoarding their libraries of knowledge, etc. - all the stuff wizards normally do.

And even if some of them get the bright idea to create a trip-hammer and stamp out some instant plate mail from Walls of Iron, they probably limit themselves to furnishing their own private army (the guards they hire to defend their homes) and, at most, a modest trade to fund their research.

Anything more than that would be too time-consuming and too distracting to bother with.


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Actually, I am fairly sure that magic IMPEDES high level progress.

This goes back to the 'rare genius' thing I mentioned. Lets say you have a noble with a crazy idea (lets say 'stealing a river'-something that Da Vinci actually tried to do. It was the Arno River, which is also seen in the background of the Mona Lisa).

When you use mundane forces like technology, your genius creates processes that have create blue prints. For the stealing the river scenario- that would also means that he has to make blue prints that can be understood by the laypersons that have to dig the channels for the water. That means there is a large body of evidence of how her did it, and others can use the blueprints and the work done by the laborers to copy it. They can use the innovations created for more modest works that can benefit people who don't have huge noble sized budgets.

When a wizard does it, he just uses his magic to get it done. Who can copy that- other high level wizards. So you get no spread of this technique past that small community of geniuses. And their advances stay very squarely in the realm of 'noble budgets'.

So yeah... there is a reason why guns comes from Alkenstar- right smack dap in the middle of the 'no magic' zone. Magic is simply horribly, horribly inefficient when applied as a large societal asset (past low level spells- and admittedly, those would be fairly major advances for our society too- taking a person straight from 'dying' to 'he'll sleep it off')


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An unhealthy mix of perpetual warfare and religious fundamentalism is all you need to stifle technical and social development.

It is not hard to think of contemporary or historic examples.


lemeres wrote:

Actually, I am fairly sure that magic IMPEDES high level progress.

This goes back to the 'rare genius' thing I mentioned. Lets say you have a noble with a crazy idea (lets say 'stealing a river'-something that Da Vinci actually tried to do. It was the Arno River, which is also seen in the background of the Mona Lisa).

When you use mundane forces like technology, your genius creates processes that have create blue prints. For the stealing the river scenario- that would also means that he has to make blue prints that can be understood by the laypersons that have to dig the channels for the water. That means there is a large body of evidence of how her did it, and others can use the blueprints and the work done by the laborers to copy it. They can use the innovations created for more modest works that can benefit people who don't have huge noble sized budgets.

When a wizard does it, he just uses his magic to get it done. Who can copy that- other high level wizards. So you get no spread of this technique past that small community of geniuses. And their advances stay very squarely in the realm of 'noble budgets'.

So yeah... there is a reason why guns comes from Alkenstar- right smack dap in the middle of the 'no magic' zone. Magic is simply horribly, horribly inefficient when applied as a large societal asset (past low level spells- and admittedly, those would be fairly major advances for our society too- taking a person straight from 'dying' to 'he'll sleep it off')

I agree.

I suppose another way of looking at this is that magic is fundamentally irrational and impossible to develop into a science and from that into technology.

Another possibility is that the practitioners of magic keep their craft a secret stifling innovation much like the artisans of the past. Perhaps it's called arcane for a reason.


Another point to bear in mind (sorry for spamming the thread) is that technological societies are rare. In human history a highly technological society has only arisen once that we know about. Most ancient societies never progressed much past the Stone Age. Perhaps the explanation is as simple as most civilisations collapse before they make any serious technological progress?


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Wall of Iron says the iron from it is trash

Stone Shape says fine detail is not possible

Over the years I have seen rules added to stop a technological explosion. So I would guess that again and again over the years many players and some DMs have gamed technological explosions and did not like the end result.

Most spells were written for a battle that would take 20 minutes or now closer to 2 minutes in game time. The material was not meant to effect the worlds future as a commodity. So the gold rule if you so chose in your game can be that something is not going to make it easy to have a technological explosion.

If you have deities would they have any reason to foster technology.

If you have wizards guilds would they have any reason to foster technology.

Would any body even think about since you can just have a magic user do it.

If your wizard stone shapes a door shape he or she is taking a piece of clay and forming it in to a door shape and than the stone takes that shape. Now we know we are going to be nice and let that door look better that it would if you gave me a piece of clay and less than 6 seconds to turn it in to a door. But we do not have to be nice and have that door be the same quality or strength as a stone door that had its stone picked by a stone mason and crafted by a Dwarven stove carver and installed by a engineer. Perhaps magic turns a good piece of stone into a great piece of stone but it could just as easily weaken the grain or alignment of the stones crystalline structure turning a great stone block in the a worthless piece of rock.

Spells that create light are often used to turn a medieval castle into a modern lit city in games but what would be the effect of light that generated no heat. I could perhaps see swarms of deadly bugs swarming around a magically lit castle.

Of course if the point in the game is to have magic replace technology then go for it.


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Boomerang Nebula wrote:

An unhealthy mix of perpetual warfare and religious fundamentalism is all you need to stifle technical and social development.

It is not hard to think of contemporary or historic examples.

I am unsure about perpetual warfare.

While yes, there is the fact that war, in general, isn't acutally profitable (it burns up most of the profits, and maybe moves enough of them to your side that it seems like it is profitable). But it also requires equipment and support to eb at their highest level, since ever slight failure and delay costs the lives of your troops. It can be quite the testing ground since the realities of war place demanding challenges to overcome.

A lot of metalurgy comes from one guy wanting a stronger sword or better armor than the guy next door, getting a crossbow that shoot just a little farther than the other guy's so you can shoot him first. And that ignores the various support technology- building bridges to allow easier access, making strong walls and gates to prevent invasion. And again- going back to nobles with crazy idea- Alexander the great turned an island into a peninsula during a siege on a strong fortress on the island (basically letting his troops just walk straight in).

Overall, you can find a lot of useful techological principles in the things that go into making stronger equipment. The metalurgy for swords and armor is part of the foundation of our modern society with huge skyscrapers made of steel skeletons. So as long as the war doesn't completely consume all the resources (which would prevent nobles from getting the money to spare for their 'crazy ideas'), it can be benefitial. Just look at how the French phased out the longbow (which relied on years of dedicated physical conditioning to pull back a string strong enough to pierce through plate armor) to the crossbow (which just needed a few weeks of training to get a peasant up to task for shooting through the same armor) after the 100 Years War.

Totalyl agreeing that potential dogmaticism and resistence to new ideas might serve as impediments though.

EDIT:...and again, magic ruins everything. Because instead of learning how to forge a stronger sword with better metalurgy, they instead decide just to rely on enhancement bonus to improve strength. Want farther shooting bows? Just get the distance property, instead of making a fundamentally better product. I think they might have gotten over that...I am sure it delayed things, none the less.


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Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Although it is reasonable that societies will advance, it does not follow that every society will advance in the same way.

The big thing that changed our technology was mass production. Without mass production, many of the machines and conveniences we take for granted would be extremely expensive and rare. Similar to say...magic items in fantasy RPG worlds.

Along that system of logic, I simply assume fantasy worlds never developed mass production, and as a result relies on magical crafting to make high end "tech equivalent" items, and that such worlds are otherwise as advanced as we are - minus mass production.

Granted, it is a stretch. Then again, resurrection, simulacrum, teleportation and other magic spells are beyond our current equivalent in technology.


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I've dealt with this for Homecoming in regards to firearms, but the essential problem remains the same - how do you slow down the Industrial Revolution, whether it's done with or without magic? My reply won't deal with Golarion, but it might help with a homebrew campaign.

---

With Magic:

With magic, it's actually pretty simple, and it's something you can deal with rather handily: users of magic of whatever level are not particularly populous. If you look at the requirements for Leadership, especially the mythic leadership levels, after 2nd level you need 2 followers of Level X before getting 1 follower of Level X + 1. To get one - just one - 20th level follower, you'd need to have a leadership score of 13,138. That gives you, amongst other things, 1,310,800 level 1 followers, 131,080 2nd level followers, and then divide by 2 as you go along. (You'd have 129 12th level followers, for what it's worth.) For ballpark use, I consider there to be 10 'normal' individuals for each 1st level individual. That makes for 13,108,000 people - or if you want 10 norms for every classed-levels individual, you're looking at 15,729,730 norms - for either 14,680,973 or 17,302,703 people per one 20th level character (or 129 12th level character).

That's a lot of people, but at the same time, you're looking at roughly 450 million souls planet-wide. Let's use the higher number, 10 norms for every character-leveled individual no matter their level. That equates to 26 characters of 20th level across the planet - 3,355 12th level characters. In Europe, you have around 90 million people - five 20th level characters. You still have 671 characters of 12th level, but only (maybe) a fifth of them are going to be of the mage classes, about 130-135 mages/sorcerers scattered across the continent. That's still enough for one in every major city, with a spreading assortment of lesser mages to help or rival her. So y'know, come to think of it that's certainly enough to trigger an industrial revolution of some sort - so how do you stop it?

Simple: you make it difficult. Magic remains distrusted for some reason; food grown by hand, 'naturally', is better than magically-assisted growth, or mage-food, or whatever. Too much magic use, or constant magic use, over a certain period of time starts to stretch, warp, and/or tear the fabric of the magical 'threads' that cover the land, resulting in spots that are high in magic, wild magic, uncontrollable magic ... and dead magic. The 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' problem remains possible, and if there's a great anything (desert, ice shelf, volcano, etc.) then there can be a bound elemental or something that is at the core of it, which makes for another great reason for mages to police their own kind.

As well, when you get down to it, norms are the 'nuclear weapon' of the world. Yes, a high level mage can lay waste to thousands of square kilometers of land, slay thousands of people ... and if he does that, somewhere there's going to be people putting money into the coffer of some organization that will set out to put not only that mage, but a lot of other mages into the grave. Self-policing comes into effect.

Does that mean that mages can't make advances? Hell no. At least two locations in Homecoming are quite advanced, and one of them is ruled by Priest-Dukes who ensure that their citizens have some pretty spiffy advancements, some of which have their foundations in magic. But when you get down to it, carriages are still going to be drawn by horses, feather tokens used only in emergencies, and the like. Because there's only so much of a market for those +1 longswords a mage is 'churning out', especially when just one of them is the purchase price of a pretty nice manor house. Make five, and you're set for your foreseeable future.

Which makes the problem pretty self-correcting on an economic level, unless the mages are going to work for pennies on the gold crown, spending far more money than they're going to earn in order to set stuff up.

You can also rule that the substance of certain effects - such as Wall of Iron - have rapid decomposition if their substance is taken from the spell, i.e. iron taken from the wall to be used for other purposes rusts quickly, making the spell a non-starter when it comes to doing an end-run around mundane methodologies ...


---
With Tech:

So you're going to go the traditional way - by simply upping the technological base. This can be done, but it can very readily lead to mass modernization of things - firearms are a prime example, but let's face it, steam (and then fossil fuel) power is at least as great a 'threat' to the fantastical way of gaming. How can you allow for some things to advance, and yet not overwhelm everything?

I'm doing some experimentation on this, but it boils down to one thing: danger. If a steam boiler or an automated loom is even more dangerous than they are in real life (and in real life they are deadly), you have an innate way of keeping them rare: make them even more dangerous than they are, and thus 'safe' ones a matter of either someone with a knack (which for Homecoming firearms is anyone with Grit), or else a minimum level for (relatively) safe usage. Not that someone of lower level can't USE one of them, it's just that it gets more touchy and prone to malfunctioning unless someone 'with sufficient skill' is on-hand to keep its restive nature under control.

In Pathfinder, firearms have this built in; malfunctioning. With my experiment, I'm increasing the risk for people with neither the training (feat) or knack (Grit), which means most people aren't going to take the time to risk it, instead going for the bow-out-of-the-box. You can shift this same concept over to mechanical advances, whether that's steam or fossil-fuel advancements; perhaps the chance for oil and coal to evolve doesn't happen as readily as it has in the real world, or perhaps the pressures involved fluctuate too erratically. Give steam and oil-based pressure-driven machines (meaning almost anything straight out mechanical) a malfunction rating that has to be rolled every combat action, or every 10 minutes out of combat; especially if there's an explosion threat, such objects quickly become slow starters, useable only by people who are very highly trained in their use (and perhaps with a 'knack' feat), which will typically mean only PCs.


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Boomerang Nebula wrote:

I agree.

I suppose another way of looking at this is that magic is fundamentally irrational and impossible to develop into a science and from that into technology.

Another possibility is that the practitioners of magic keep their craft a secret stifling innovation much like the artisans of the past. Perhaps it's called arcane for a reason.

I think it might be possible to make some small degree of magic more replicated and practiced on an institutional level...but yes, cabals and elitist universities.

I mean...if you included cantrips in a mandatory public education program, the quality of life would rise dramatically. Just throw out prestidigitation, create water, and light/dancing lights, and society will see leaps and bounds.

Create water means that you are less inclined to require large infrastructure like aqua ducts, yet you can still get fresh clean water that is safe to drink (which improves general health- the 'drinking downstream from where you pee' problem)

Prestidigitation covers a lot, but lets look at basic stuff like cleaning. That allows you to get things clean (possibly even medically sterile!) removing another health hazard, and you can do it near instantly. The creation of washing machines and vacuum cleaners greatly opened up free time for home makers, as well as aiding places like workshops and restaurants.

And it isn't like you can't get people access to this stuff for at least limited uses per day. I LOVE the trifler trait, since it uses the excuse of 'learned it from grandma' to give anyone (even somone with dumped mental stats) 3 uses of prestidigitation per day. That is 3 hours of use, more than enough to take care of chores.

But generally, to get past low level magic, I think you might need 'computers' of sorts- machines designed to take some of the computational and internal processes away from the human users. That would greatly advance magic, since it requires less 'genius' to get going- more user friendly. I imagine that is what is up with the culture that made the Divinity (the space ship that crashed into Numeria) had going for it. The fact that some of its systems were advanced enough to serve as pseudo gods seems promising.


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Something else that should be remembered is that just because we consider an idea to be obvious (in retrospect) does not mean that it's obvious or will be widely used when finally invented.

A classic example of this is wheels-on-luggage. Luggage has been around for literally thousands of years. So has wheels. The patent for rolling luggage was applied for in 1970. The ancient Romans were putting trunks into the backs of chariots, but many of the people on this board were alive when the rollaboard was invented.


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Because the ability is there, doesn't mean that there is an inclination our cultural want or need to do something. All of the ingredients for gunpowder were available, but the Chinese developed it in the 2nd century AD, it would take it until the 13th century to make it to Europe.

A wizard, or even mundane inventor, in your medieval environment may be able to invent any number of advances, but if the society see no real benefit, why would anyone care?

Sovereign Court

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As the old saying goes: "Necessity is the mother of invention." When you have magic to help you, there's less need to find a technological solution.


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lemeres wrote:
Boomerang Nebula wrote:

I agree.

I suppose another way of looking at this is that magic is fundamentally irrational and impossible to develop into a science and from that into technology.

Another possibility is that the practitioners of magic keep their craft a secret stifling innovation much like the artisans of the past. Perhaps it's called arcane for a reason.

I think it might be possible to make some small degree of magic more replicated and practiced on an institutional level...but yes, cabals and elitist universities.

I mean...if you included cantrips in a mandatory public education program, the quality of life would rise dramatically. Just throw out prestidigitation, create water, and light/dancing lights, and society will see leaps and bounds.

This makes the unwarranted assumption that anyone can cast spells. Many, perhaps even most, fantasy worlds imply (or outright state) that only some people have the Talent, or the Gift, or the Blood (usually Capitalized). (Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is a good example, and a good read in its own right -- I recommend it).

This is not something explicitly stated in the Pathfinder rules; while it's true that any PC can cast spells by taking a level in wizard, it's also the case that any PC can take levels in sorcerer, which is explicitly bloodline driven. It just so happens that any PC who wants to become a sorcerer just happens to (retroactively) have the appropriate bloodline. Similarly, anyone who wants to become a witch just happens to be able to make a deal with their chosen patron, and anyone who wants to become an oracle just happens to be "blessed" by the powers of their choice.

If (as I consider typical in a fantasy world) the Gift of magic is a rare and wondrous commodity, there simply aren't enough wizard-hours in the world to make a huge difference. Yes, a wizard can raise a tower in a night, but your average wizard isn't going to want to spend six days a week over several years building a city of low-cost housing for the King of Ruritania.

Liberty's Edge

Technology will put the power of magic in everyone 's hands. Why would wizards want this ? To say nothing of dragons and many of the gods


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
lemeres wrote:
Boomerang Nebula wrote:

I agree.

I suppose another way of looking at this is that magic is fundamentally irrational and impossible to develop into a science and from that into technology.

Another possibility is that the practitioners of magic keep their craft a secret stifling innovation much like the artisans of the past. Perhaps it's called arcane for a reason.

I think it might be possible to make some small degree of magic more replicated and practiced on an institutional level...but yes, cabals and elitist universities.

I mean...if you included cantrips in a mandatory public education program, the quality of life would rise dramatically. Just throw out prestidigitation, create water, and light/dancing lights, and society will see leaps and bounds.

This makes the unwarranted assumption that anyone can cast spells. Many, perhaps even most, fantasy worlds imply (or outright state) that only some people have the Talent, or the Gift, or the Blood (usually Capitalized). (Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is a good example, and a good read in its own right -- I recommend it).

This is not something explicitly stated in the Pathfinder rules; while it's true that any PC can cast spells by taking a level in wizard, it's also the case that any PC can take levels in sorcerer, which is explicitly bloodline driven. It just so happens that any PC who wants to become a sorcerer just happens to (retroactively) have the appropriate bloodline. Similarly, anyone who wants to become a witch just happens to be able to make a deal with their chosen patron, and anyone who wants to become an oracle just happens to be "blessed" by the powers of their choice.

If (as I consider typical in a fantasy world) the Gift of magic is a rare and wondrous commodity, there simply aren't enough wizard-hours in the world to make a huge difference. Yes, a wizard can raise a tower in a night, but your average wizard isn't going to want to spend six days a week over...

Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training. Worthwhile in the long run perhaps, but we need the kids to get the crops in.

Liberty's Edge

And that's not even taking into account how the peasant got the required XPs to reach a new level ;-)


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Orfamay Quest wrote:

This makes the unwarranted assumption that anyone can cast spells. Many, perhaps even most, fantasy worlds imply (or outright state) that only some people have the Talent, or the Gift, or the Blood (usually Capitalized). (Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is a good example, and a good read in its own right -- I recommend it).

This is not something explicitly stated in the Pathfinder rules; while it's true that any PC can cast spells by taking a level in wizard, it's also the case that any PC can take levels in sorcerer, which is explicitly bloodline driven. It just so happens that any PC who wants to become a sorcerer just happens to (retroactively) have the appropriate bloodline. Similarly, anyone who wants to become a witch just happens to be able to make a deal with their chosen patron, and anyone who wants to become an oracle just happens to be "blessed" by the powers of their choice.

If (as I consider typical in a fantasy world) the Gift of magic is a rare and wondrous commodity, there simply aren't enough wizard-hours in the world to make a huge difference. Yes, a wizard can raise a tower in a night, but your average wizard isn't going to want to spend six days a week over...

Well, if we look at it mechanically, the game generally does stop not anyone from being a spellcaster and slinging spells as long as they have the stats. Since you only need what? 10 in the stat? to cast, and 10 is 'average' for humans, then most people can probably cast. And that is including the idea that a lot of people might have a 9 in one stat, but 11 in another- averaged out, they probably have a 10 or above in at leas one mental stat (allowing for studied magic like wizards, faith based magic like clerics/druids, or will based magic like sorcerers/bards).

And technically, everyone does have the ability to cast magic to some degree. Anyone can take the trifler trait to some degree or another, even if they dumped mental stats (thus why I brought it up). Even just getting prestidigitation 1/day from a lesser trait would improve your life- imagine having the magic power to clean your room with 0 effort. And you can pull stunts like for for an hour straight.

thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training. Worthwhile in the long run perhaps, but we need the kids to get the crops in.

We have that same problem in the real world, and yet we still have a mandatory educational system. And it could easily be based off of thes same idea- have the kids train during the off season. What else are they going to do during the winter?

And I am not asking for full cantrip use (although it would be preferrable). 3/day use of the spell is more than enough for a lot of the cantrips. And yes- that would take years to learn. Thus why you target children over the course of their entire growth period.


lemeres wrote:
...why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles....

Same reason why rich people want to get richer, and don't just stop at any arbitrary ammount of money. At least I don't know of any rich person who was like "You know what? 1 million dollars per month is enough. I won't expand anymore."

lemeres wrote:
... So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'....

But my point is that just one 12lv wizard is enough to completely change the world. You don't need hundreds, magic is just that good.

DM_Blake wrote:

This one's easy: Wizards have better things to do.

You could argue that Einstein (or Edison or Franklin or DaVinci) could have used their genius to industrialize ... for the sake of churning out super machines and making vast products using their genius to mass produce cool stuff. In fact, I think they were smart enough to do that very thing.

But they didn't want to. They had better things to do.

Well, yes, In Einstein's case. But there were a whole lot of engineers who decided to pursue money and fame instead. Like, say, Edison(funny how you mentioned him), who is famous for mass-producing awesome stuff(lightbulbs). Or Elon Musk(again, mass production of electric cars). More importantly, making money and acquiring influence that way can be very, very fun, and I find it hard to imagine that some abstract "knowledge" or long-forgotten artifact might seem more desirable.


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Klara Meison wrote:
lemeres wrote:
...why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles....

Same reason why rich people want to get richer, and don't just stop at any arbitrary ammount of money. At least I don't know of any rich person who was like "You know what? 1 million dollars per month is enough. I won't expand anymore."

lemeres wrote:
... So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'....
But my point is that just one 12lv wizard is enough to completely change the world. You don't need hundreds, magic is just that good.

Not all rich people are just part of a monolithic horde seeking the financial flesh of the living. Some just want their 401k and then to retire to miami where they live a life of liesure afterwards.

And yes- one high level wizard changes the world. As long as he lives (...or unlives) there. The minute he dies or decides to move somewhere else, the entire operation collapses completely. That is the difference between magic and technology- usually, an operation can keep going by just copying the things you did while your genius was still there (doesn't always work, but does well enough most of the time since SOMEONE usually had to help him in his work, and gained some familiarity with it).

With magic...even if you have all the instructions for the spell in front of your, you might never, ever accomplish even a degraded version of the product just because you aren't a high level caster.


lemeres wrote:
Klara Meison wrote:
lemeres wrote:
...why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles....

Same reason why rich people want to get richer, and don't just stop at any arbitrary ammount of money. At least I don't know of any rich person who was like "You know what? 1 million dollars per month is enough. I won't expand anymore."

lemeres wrote:
... So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'....
But my point is that just one 12lv wizard is enough to completely change the world. You don't need hundreds, magic is just that good.

Not all rich people are just part of a monolithic horde seeking the financial flesh of the living. Some just want their 401k and then to retire to miami where they live a life of liesure afterwards.

And yes- one high level wizard changes the world. As long as he lives (...or unlives) there. The minute he dies or decides to move somewhere else, the entire operation collapses completely. That is the difference between magic and technology- usually, an operation can keep going by just copying the things you did while your genius was still there (doesn't always work, but does well enough most of the time since SOMEONE usually had to help him in his work, and gained some familiarity with it).

With magic...even if you have all the instructions for the spell in front of your, you might never, ever accomplish even a degraded version of the product just because you aren't a high level caster.

Unless that wizard made a X times per day wall of iron magical item. Then, of course, the operation contines uninterrupted.


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Klara Meison wrote:
Unless that wizard made a X times per day wall of iron magical item. Then, of course, the operation contines uninterrupted.

That still means that the operation never outgrows the bounds of the genius- the next city over can't ever copy that, and start a technological rivalry that greatly develops product in a hope of monopolizing traders.

At most, they can steal the magic item for their own operation. And then people fight over it. And then someone decides to break it. And then nothing. Because there aren't any high level wizards around any more to make a new one or fix it.


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Goddity wrote:
You're trying to apply reason to magic. That never ends well. Just remember, it's magic. It doesn't have to make sense.

Actually that's not the point. What the characters do about magic not making sense isn't justified by this.


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thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training.

Well, yes, and no. Mostly no. I can become a wizard in eleven level-appropriate encounters over the course of two days, simply by choosing to become a wizard when I level up.


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lemeres wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training. Worthwhile in the long run perhaps, but we need the kids to get the crops in.
We have that same problem in the real world, and yet we still have a mandatory educational system. And it could easily be based off of thes same idea- have the kids train during the off season. What else are they going to do during the winter?

We do now. Because we're not living in a subsistence agriculture economy. For most of history, the vast majority of children got little to no formal education - they needed to work the farm or take care of the younger kids or all of the other household work.

lemeres wrote:
And technically, everyone does have the ability to cast magic to some degree. Anyone can take the trifler trait to some degree or another, even if they dumped mental stats (thus why I brought it up). Even just getting prestidigitation 1/day from a lesser trait would improve your life- imagine having the magic power to clean your room with 0 effort. And you can pull stunts like for for an hour straight.

It's not clear that everyone can, as Orfamay said. Perhaps only those magically gifted can take "trifler", even if they don't go on to use those gifts as an actual caster. When it comes to building PCs (or even NPCs), it's just assumed that the character has the appropriate gift, even retroactively if necessary, much like a PC can always multiclass into sorcerer even though that's tied to bloodlines.

Even the fluff for trifler says you need to have a "mystically gifted grandmother". Not everyone in the world is going to have a close relation who's a caster.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training.
Well, yes, and no. Mostly no. I can become a wizard in eleven level-appropriate encounters over the course of two days, simply by choosing to become a wizard when I level up.

But only after your first non-wizard level.

And frankly, I see that as a excuse to make multiclassing in play possible and wouldn't use it as a world building element as we're suggesting here.

Liberty's Edge

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Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training.

Well, yes, and no. Mostly no. I can become a wizard in eleven level-appropriate encounters over the course of two days, simply by choosing to become a wizard when I level up.

That is if you survive said encounters ;-)


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Pathfinder economics runs on willing suspension of disbelief, but here we go.

Unskilled labor is about 33 gp/year.
Skilled labor is about 100 gp/year.
A slave is about 100 gp. Void where prohibited.
A single 6th level spell casting by an 11th level wizard costs 660 gp.

So for an industrial revolution wizard's spell to be worthwhile in replacing workers, it must be 20 unskilled person-years of productivity or seven skilled person-years of productivity.

If a golem is three times as productive as a person at unskilled labor, it would need to cost 500 gp or less to pay for itself in five years. Even at 30x efficiency, it's not happening. (Undead do make those returns, and Golarion does have an underground undead trade supplying them to unscrupulous businesses- usually eventually resulting in the undead getting loose. Geb is amongst the world's leading agricultural producers because it uses undead laborers.)


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thejeff wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training.
Well, yes, and no. Mostly no. I can become a wizard in eleven level-appropriate encounters over the course of two days, simply by choosing to become a wizard when I level up.

But only after your first non-wizard level.

And frankly, I see that as a excuse to make multiclassing in play possible and wouldn't use it as a world building element as we're suggesting here.

But that's also the reason that all PCs have (miraculously) whatever bloodline, divine connection, or whatever, to become a caster. The widespread ability to cast spells should not be used as a world building element, either.


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Klara Meison wrote:
lemeres wrote:
Klara Meison wrote:
lemeres wrote:
...why the hell would most wizards bother getting to a high level (either through combat, or arduous research)? They can just sit back and have a relatively cushy job making +1 and +2 swords for silly nobles....

Same reason why rich people want to get richer, and don't just stop at any arbitrary ammount of money. At least I don't know of any rich person who was like "You know what? 1 million dollars per month is enough. I won't expand anymore."

lemeres wrote:
... So once you get past the fact that there are barely any wizards that would get qualified for what you are talking about...then you realize that there are not enough for a 'revolution'....
But my point is that just one 12lv wizard is enough to completely change the world. You don't need hundreds, magic is just that good.

Not all rich people are just part of a monolithic horde seeking the financial flesh of the living. Some just want their 401k and then to retire to miami where they live a life of liesure afterwards.

And yes- one high level wizard changes the world. As long as he lives (...or unlives) there. The minute he dies or decides to move somewhere else, the entire operation collapses completely. That is the difference between magic and technology- usually, an operation can keep going by just copying the things you did while your genius was still there (doesn't always work, but does well enough most of the time since SOMEONE usually had to help him in his work, and gained some familiarity with it).

With magic...even if you have all the instructions for the spell in front of your, you might never, ever accomplish even a degraded version of the product just because you aren't a high level caster.

Unless that wizard made a X times per day wall of iron magical item. Then, of course, the operation contines uninterrupted.

The iron made by the spell is not suitable for making anything else. Says so in the description, so there's your answer. Can you find a different source of material? Otherwise, yes, if you change the rules you can break things. I could also make Major Creation an instantaneous spell and break things.


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More generally, if you want your world to have nearly everyone using at least cantrips and casters as common as flies and a fully developed magitech economy, you can justify that under Pathfinder rules.

If you want the vast majority of the population to lack any magical ability and casters to be rare and to not have had any great effect on the world's economy, you can justify that too.

Pick what kind of world you want to run/play in, do a little hand-waving to justify it and have fun with it.

Digging too deep into "What would it really be like" is sometimes fun, but mostly pointless. There are too many unknowns. Too many assumptions. Too many things unspecified in the rules, because PF isn't a world/economy simulator. It's an adventure game.


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The Raven Black wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Even if anyone can theoretically become a wizard, it still requires years of training.

Well, yes, and no. Mostly no. I can become a wizard in eleven level-appropriate encounters over the course of two days, simply by choosing to become a wizard when I level up.

That is if you survive said encounters ;-)

This is surprisingly easy to game, actually.

Presenting, for your pleasure, Orfamay Quest's Wizarding Academy. Guaranteed to make you a wizard in seven days, or your money back!

As a level 2 wizard (with PC wealth), I am a CR 2 encounter. Once you've paid your tuition, we face each other, mano-a-mano, in a boxing ring delivering punches at each other. If you are able to beat me, you get 600 experience points; beat me four times and you've gained enough xp to take that wizarding level. Given the fact that I'm a wizard, with no strength to speak of, no useful BAB or feats, and a set of useless spells for the day, you should have no problem beating me four times out of seven days.

... especially since, even if you lose, the damage I inflict is all non-lethal, so it will be healed in six hours or so. So we can have one bout before breakfast, another at lunch, and another in the evening -- and there's a good chance you'll be a wizard before tomorrow's lunch.


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Here's a question that interests me.

Let's say the setting has an infinite number of "Primes" (you know like in some D&D versions).

A wizard uses a spell to somehow travel to our world and look around.

Would he necessarily like what he sees?

A world where nerds aren't feared and little short of gods as in his own?

A world where frankly the health care isn't as good as a trip to the local temple with a bag of gold?

Just saying that maybe a lot of people would be very interested in seeing a world such as ours never arise.

Heck what's the point of living if you have to use an airplane to fly, or can't read minds, or charm or dominate whoever you choose?

And the wonderful things you can do can be done by ANYONE if they use one of those silly machines instead of putting in decades of study.

No thanks, the world is just the way it should be, and Progress need not apply.

Actually if Progress knocks on the door, it's going to get a fireball in the face.


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lemeres wrote:

Well, if we look at it mechanically, the game generally does stop not anyone from being a spellcaster and slinging spells as long as they have the stats. Since you only need what? 10 in the stat? to cast, and 10 is 'average' for humans, then most people can probably cast. And that is including the idea that a lot of people might have a 9 in one stat, but 11 in another- averaged out, they probably have a 10 or above in at leas one mental stat (allowing for studied magic like wizards, faith based magic like clerics/druids, or will based magic like sorcerers/bards).

And technically, everyone does have the ability to cast magic to some degree. Anyone can take the trifler trait to some degree or another, even if they dumped mental stats (thus why I brought it up). Even just getting prestidigitation 1/day from a lesser trait would improve your life- imagine having the magic power to clean your room with 0 effort. And you can pull stunts like for for an hour straight..

Ultimately at some point you decide as a world creator that either your mechanics serve story or the other way around.

In the NPC Codex there is a rogue who's been frustrated by her inability to learn magic despite the fact that she clearly does have the Intelligence needed to do so. So while there is no mechanic for the "Gift" as you amply stated, doesn't mean that like gods, you can't have it as a purely story element.


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Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
strated by her inability to learn magic despite the fact that she clearly does have the Intelligence needed to do so. So while there is no mechanic for the "Gift" as you amply stated, doesn't mean that like gods, you can't have it as a purely story element.

I like that stories like that. NPC Codex was a book right? What was the Rogue's name?


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To touch on what lemere said earlier about computers:
Smart casting constructs(that can build other smart casting constructs)
I never looked at any rule book to see if you can't do this,just throwing it out there
:)


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Even if we acknolwedge that not 'everyone' can cast basic spells, just getting 10% of the population (instead of the less than 1% of full casters- with full caster careers adn prices- I imagine run around currently) would be a huge step up in terms of quality of life.

Rather than having proper casters (with the full fees that entails per casting), if you flood the market with cantrip users, you can create entire industries off of that.

A landromat that is just a guy sitting in at a tiny stall that you bring your laundry to so he can hand wiggle at it (technically, I think this is an existing service- 1 gp per use, which is 10x daily wages if I remember right). Having a milk man like service that goes to each house every morning and fills a large container with fresh water in 1-2 minutes.Mending- just mending. Every butcher and restaurant that has someone with 'purify food and drink' on staff.

Heck- squads of peasants that shoot acid splashes and rays of frost from atop city walls. Because touch AC is that low, and throwing out a few dozen d3's still adds up. And disrupt undead is only slightly worse than a pistol (at least for level 1 commoners without any nice gunslinger things) for a firing squad against undead. Enmass tactics where they get slight ranged capabilities can be great- just look at romans with the pilum (javelin), since that was one of their mainstay tactics. It would pretty much spell the end of heavily armored knights since that does nothing when dealing with touch attacks.


Um...doesn't the Wall of Iron spell specifically state that it cannot be used to make other objects?

"Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena. Iron created by this spell is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold."

I'm confident that this clause was included specifically to prevent the kind of actions the OP brings up.


sunbeam wrote:
Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
strated by her inability to learn magic despite the fact that she clearly does have the Intelligence needed to do so. So while there is no mechanic for the "Gift" as you amply stated, doesn't mean that like gods, you can't have it as a purely story element.
I like that stories like that. NPC Codex was a book right? What was the Rogue's name?

I don't know offhand, I'll have to check it out.


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DM fiat, generally.


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lemeres wrote:


A landromat that is just a guy sitting in at a tiny stall that you bring your laundry to so he can hand wiggle at it (technically, I think this is an existing service- 1 gp per use, which is 10x daily wages if I remember right). Having a milk man like service that goes to each house every morning and fills a large container with fresh water in 1-2 minutes.Mending- just mending. Every butcher and restaurant that has someone with 'purify food and drink' on staff.

According to the book, spellcasting services cost 5gp per cantrip.

That's the point QuidEst made earlier; my magical laundry service is competing against the fact that someone can hire a maid-of-all-work for 3sp per day, or a Muggle hand laundry that will clean items of clothing at 3cp each (both of which are also in the book).

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