Why wouldn't Someone Learn Magic...

[Nalfeshnee]

not everyone would me magically-inclined, just linke in the real world not everyone wants to become an investment banker or physicist or whatever. This is a bit of a silly wiestion if you ask me. There are so many vocations and jobs in the real world which are renown for high income margins, though very few people still head that way. It would be the same thing in D&D

 

[Andor]

Pretty much my point. The orginal question was why haven't casters enslaved the rest. I was playing devil's advocate, loosely based on DMG demographics. It seemed that the use of magic as a mass weapon was mentioned without thought to those variables (no insult intended), so I went on a 'prove it' rant.

Ahh. This explains it. I was wondering where you were coming from. The original question was the observation that if the whole of society had the same options as the PCs then magic should be as dominent a societal force as technology is for us. A 'magic-phobic' society was proposed as the only way around this, and I pointed out that a 'muggle' society cannot co-exist with a magic using one, any more than a stone age society that attacked technology users on sight could co-exist with ours without a mechanical reason to allow it. Now there are one or two such stone age tribes in our world and the mechanical reson for their existence is extreme isolation in the midst of savage jugles like the amazon or lowlands new guinea.

No one ever suggested that a small cabal of mid level wizards could enslave a continent on the basis of the fireball spell.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Ahh. This explains it. I was wondering where you were coming from. The original question was the observation that if the whole of society had the same options as the PCs then magic should be as dominent a societal force as technology is for us. A 'magic-phobic' society was proposed as the only way around this, and I pointed out that a 'muggle' society cannot co-exist with a magic using one, any more than a stone age society that attacked technology users on sight could co-exist with ours without a mechanical reason to allow it. Now there are one or two such stone age tribes in our world and the mechanical reson for their existence is extreme isolation in the midst of savage jugles like the amazon or lowlands new guinea.

No one ever suggested that a small cabal of mid level wizards could enslave a continent on the basis of the fireball spell.

Yeah, I was wondering where the "mobs" were coming from too.... Possibly "magic using neighbors" was interpreted in the literal "next door" sense rather than the (obviously imho) intended "neighboring nations" sense.

 

[wingsandsword]

All very interesting ideas but . . . they are in conflict with the RAW!

Ahem, the RAW isn't everything.

The rules of D&D are meant to help depict adventurers in a fantasy world, and the world that the adventurers encounter, especially the things they do that challenge them and make their lives interesting. The further you move from that model, the less sense that the RAW will make. If you push the demographics, economics, or any other part of the rules for depicting a D&D world too far they won't hold up, because the D&D RAW (or any RAW) is not an absolutely perfect modelling of reality (sorry).

The rules are there to help depict the setting of the game, the setting isn't there to help depict what the rules say. In a normal D&D setting, the vast majority of people are poor commoners who are barely literate (they might be literate for rules purposes, but they aren't exactly going to be reading fine literature), because the society and economics of the world means that most people can't afford magical training, magical organizations don't have huge open enrollment public magic schools.

Why not say that in d20 Modern, why doesn't everybody go to college and become doctors and get the Surgery feat and lots of ranks of Treat Injury and Knowledge (Earth & Life Sciences), or Lawyers and get lots of ranks in Diplomacy and Knowledge (Civics), because there is no rule against it, and being a doctor is such a good profession. The RAW doesn't take things like this into account, because it normally assumes you're using the rules to depict a setting you have in mind, not sitting down with the RAW and trying to come up with a world based entirely off extrapolating if those exact rules applied very literally to every single person on the planet.

The intricacies of career selection of commoners and motivational career psychology of NPC's isn't exactly a part of the RAW because it's not relevant at all to 99% of D&D games. When in a typical D&D game is an adventuring party going to stop in a town, stop by a commoner, and lecture him that he should have been an expert since it's a better class in every way, or should have been an adept so he could use magic? Okay, I can see that as a OotS comic as a rules joke, but not in a normal campaign.

 

[Storyteller01]

Ahh. This explains it. I was wondering where you were coming from. The original question was the observation that if the whole of society had the same options as the PCs then magic should be as dominent a societal force as technology is for us. A 'magic-phobic' society was proposed as the only way around this, and I pointed out that a 'muggle' society cannot co-exist with a magic using one, any more than a stone age society that attacked technology users on sight could co-exist with ours without a mechanical reason to allow it. Now there are one or two such stone age tribes in our world and the mechanical reson for their existence is extreme isolation in the midst of savage jugles like the amazon or lowlands new guinea.

No one ever suggested that a small cabal of mid level wizards could enslave a continent on the basis of the fireball spell.

But by the same circumstance, non-magic users are not stone age societies. A lack of magic doesn't mean a lack of intelligence. All you have to do is look at your computer (and your skill with it) to prove that.

Using a previous example, you have 10 1st level fighters in one unit, and 9 1st level fighters with a spell caster in the other. Why engage at all if you can use ranged weapons to stay out of range of those spells? If you're using small unit tactics, ranged weapons are a given (they can't survive contact with a larger unit). When you take out the caster (and odds are you will), it goes back to non-magic users.

 

[Storyteller01]

Yeah, I was wondering where the "mobs" were coming from too.... Possibly "magic using neighbors" was interpreted in the literal "next door" sense rather than the (obviously imho) intended "neighboring nations" sense.

Neighboring nations will have their own military, or 'mob'. You'd have to explain how, with all the exp, gold, components, etc needed for magic and consant item production, how you're able to maintain a society of all magic users of the same numbers as a non-magic using society, especially without non-casters as a labor force. Unless you're using a force of mainly divine casters, exposure will have a marked effect on your (lower hp) laborers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

It occurs to me that learning magic is like learning another language.

In Canada, being bilingual (here that's French and English) is important, but most people can't speak both languages. Even in Quebec (more bilingual people there than in the rest of Canada, I believe) a significant proportion of the province doesn't speak English.

Now, I've learned French and Latin at school. Both use the same alphabet as English (the Latin alphabet was all capitals, but we didn't learn it that way).

I think learning Latin and English would be easier for someone who reads English as a native language than, say, Greek or Russian. Learning a language like Japanese, which doesn't have an alphabet, would be a lot harder. That takes years. (In fact, China had to simplify it's character system because it was hard to learn. In some civilizations that didn't use an alphabet, like Ancient Egypt, scribes were a social class. Learning to read and write wasn't just a skill you had to develop, it was your job.)

Learning magic would be at least as hard, I think, as learning hieroglyphics. And in DnD, that would only cost about two skill points (maybe four for some classes)!

 

[Storyteller01]

It occurs to me that learning magic is like learning another language.

In Canada, being bilingual (here that's French and English) is important, but most people can't speak both languages. Even in Quebec (more bilingual people there than in the rest of Canada, I believe) a significant proportion of the province doesn't speak English.

Now, I've learned French and Latin at school. Both use the same alphabet as English (the Latin alphabet was all capitals, but we didn't learn it that way).

I think learning Latin and English would be easier for someone who reads English as a native language than, say, Greek or Russian. Learning a language like Japanese, which doesn't have an alphabet, would be a lot harder. That takes years. (In fact, China had to simplify it's character system because it was hard to learn. In some civilizations that didn't use an alphabet, like Ancient Egypt, scribes were a social class. Learning to read and write wasn't just a skill you had to develop, it was your job.)

Learning magic would be at least as hard, I think, as learning hieroglyphics. And in DnD, that would only cost about two skill points (maybe four for some classes)!

Not quite though. If you talk with folks who use magic today it requires a different mind set, both for everyday life and during the ritual itself.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Not quite though. If you talk with folks who use magic today it requires a different mind set, both for everyday life and during the ritual itself.

I thought we were talking about DnD magic, not "real life" magic.

 

[Storyteller01]

I thought we were talking about DnD magic, not "real life" magic.

Same premise. If it only required the use of differing languages, you wouldn't need levels in a different class just to learn it.