Sword of Spirit
Legend
That's exactly what this exercise is. So if we assume a normal dnd setting, assuming high level people exist (even if rare), and the standard phb spell exist....we want to have an economy that works "normally". So my original post was to get from suggestions from people on how to rationalize that. Basically....why is the economy normal? Why aren't these hyper intelligent mid level wizards not swimming in gold...etc.
Ultimately that is what I want in my setting, and I have handwaved things to get it there. But I would rather have more rationale explanations, which is what people are contributing.
That's cool, if the discussion is going the way you're looking for. I run it the same way. I just wanted to point out that there are two different angles to look at it from, because it seemed like the points where the discussion is hitting walls or stopping are the points where the opposite approach is being taken.
So I'll contribute some more general methods that I go with, and maybe an example or two.
Nothing new here, but one thing I tend to do when looking at something a player should be able to do, is ask myself what the world would look like if all of the NPCs capable of casting that spell (or whatever) also did that. If I don't like the results, then I either need to examine if I can change my interpretation of the interpretable aspects of how the spell works, or if not, what is different about the PCs.
One thing that is different about the PCs is that they are generally adventurers. So what is different about adventurers? For one thing, they generally don't care nearly as much about social acceptability. Even heroic adventurers are generally looked at as more or less disreputable sorts. There is a funny quote from Balder's Gate 2 (I think) where one of the one-line commoner NPCs you can talk to says something about how when he looks into the eyes of his daughter he gains more fulfillment than all the gold and glory out there. That's not the wording he uses, but I think it's the basic sentiment, and it makes sense in the world. Most people don't consider adventuring to be something desirable. I mean, sure, when adventurers have just saved their village, or rescued said daughter (for example) they're just the bees knees. But that is soon forgotten, and then they get back to life with other real people who are actually a part of their society.
What that all means is that adventurers (and often arcane casters) can get away with things that are considered socially unacceptable to the majority of people. So take that wizard who is popping out armor like a machine. Someone already brought up the point that the local competition will probably hate that. It's bad enough if you sit out there in your tower doing who knows what, but once you start taking away people's livelihood, well guess who you are now? The Evil Wizard in the tower, congratulations. Meet the adventurers they just hired to stop you. Sure you can say that the wizards find ways to hire people to work for them, but the majority of people don't want to work for wizards. They are scary. They can turn you into a toad.
So all you really have to do to stop most of this is assume that the society isn't 100% comfortable with magic in their daily life. It's all well and good in stories, but not in my backyard.
Clerical magic is a bit different, because the priests who are likely to be providing such services are valued parts of the community that you deal with regularly, and their miracles get the divine stamp of approval. When it comes to using things like zone of truth in court trials, sure, that might be a thing for important trials. But is that sufficient? Not only are there rare ways of defeating such spells, but there are also ways to weasel around the truth, memories can be modified etc. I would expect a just society wouldn't condemn someone solely on the basis of a zone of truth spell. Treat it like a lie detect test in the real world. Some societies might, but if you move very far to the unjust direction...why bother with zone of truth? If she sinks she was innocent.
Let's get to resurrection magic, one of my favorites. Coming back from being a lifeless corpse in a world where evil animated corpses are substantially more common than people coming back to actual life. No, that's not creepy at all. It should probably be one of the most suspect things you can do. Are you a ruler or some other aristocrat? Congratulations, you've just committed political suicide. The common people can't know if it's really you that came back. Your body could be possessed by a fiend. Or what about a superstitious belief that might exist that for everyone brought back, someone else had to die. Your friend's son just died in an accident... Or even if there were no hitches to the spell itself, a belief that creepy stuff might happen around you, or maybe something followed you back from the netherworld, etc, would make sense. And in a D&D world it's quite possible that some (or all) of these actually are true on rare occasions. And that's all you need. Less than that, you just need a few people believing it's true. Welcome to superstition. Enjoy being a social outcast. I would think it might be just built into the way things work that ruling families do not allow their dead family members to be brought back. Even if they find some of these superstitions unlikely, they have an image to preserve, and it would reflect badly on them. Of course overtly evil rulers might not care--they are evil. Adventurers can get away with this because they are already disreputable sorts. Or maybe that great paladin hero that got brought back from the dead by the high priest of Goodness and Justice gets a pass, because they walk around with an aura of holiness and awesome. Good luck on convincing them your 6th level fighter should get the same pass. Adventurers might want to keep quite exactly how many times they've been raised.
Pretty much every one of these problems can be handled by focusing on the divide between adventurers and the common folk, superstition, or the need of elites to save face.
I'd think, if you're working back from the kind of world you want, you would be considering which spells &c to include that would support that vision, and cut those that don't fit. Otherwise you're really back to the same exercise.
You could do it that way too, but I'm assuming we want to keep such spells, and I think that's just as interesting, if it does require a bit more creativity.