D&D 5E Worldbuilding Ideas

[Allistar1801]

Have you ever had those 4:00 AM delusional thoughts turn into actual campaign world ideas? Well just recently I had a bit of a pivot in the way that I thought about the way different races and societies would have developed in a D&D world. This could just be my insomnia ridden brain pulling at straws, but I figured why not post about it and see what people think. I'm sorry in advance for my poor analogies and the countless parallels to our own history (It might just be one of my favorite subjects)

Concepts
Magic changes EVERYTHING when you really look at it from a historical POV. Battlemages turning the tide of battle in an instant, high priests restoring life to the fallen and purifying holy sites, druids shaping the lands to their whims and ensuring harvests. Money, fame, royal blood, they don't mean anything if you aren't able to do magic. This puts races like Tieflings, High Elves, and other races that are adept in different forms magic an edge. I can only imagine they would have warred over it and trying to find the "superior form of magic" before eventually settling down and forming a state council of some sort to regulate the different forms of magic and the way they interacted with each other. It's hard to say who the ruling class out of them would be, but one thing is for sure, casters are the new high class.

In keeping with the first one, exploration also changes drastically. Why go on random voyages when we can just scry and find new continents/the things we're looking for. I will however say that teleportation is a very iffy way to travel though, so I can totally see the whole era of sea travel still being a thing. Druids might be contracted as windcallers or storm protectors on the way to the new world. Priests and wizards would also serve great purpose in the foundation of the new colonies in so many different ways. The only thing I can see going amiss would be how the natives would interact with them, and the other races of the world. Speaking of, lets talk about those.

Races
I kind of touched on this further up, but I definitely think certain races would definitely have different things going for them in a situation like that.

Tieflings- Definitely subject to a lot of hate between their bloodline and appearances, but I think they would be in one of the best positions to capitalize on the social power that magic bestows. Charismatic for the people, magic blood for sorcerer potential, connections to devils for warlock potential, smart for various purposes and wizardry potential. They have quite a few ways to go about it here. Most of this is also echoed for the half elf too, all except the devils thing

Orcs/Half Orcs- Something about their tribal ways and their description in the players handbook kind of got me thinking about framing them in an almost native american light. Something like the Comanche or the like who were strong and savage based on their location and the neighboring tribes. Much like Indians I was kind of thinking they would have been integrated into society in one form or another, but having reservations set aside for their sacred lands.

Tritons- I know volo's paints them as the noble sea elf-ish race, but I personally see them as some of the most shamanistic races in the game alongside the Firbolg. Hear me out, they live underwater and thus couldn't develop metallurgy on a grand scale. The only way they would have to manipulate that would be the steam vents in the deepwater. Without metallurgy they're kind of stuck in a neolithic stage in development, or at least they would be if they weren't in a perfect position to capitalize on druidic magic. Fish turn into both work/military animals and more resources than just food. Stingray barbs being fashioned into swords or spears, sea turtle shells turn into perfect shields, sharks become the mount of choice, and so many more things I'm missing. A lot of what I'm saying about these guys also translates into the firbolgs as well, just replace a few words and add the ability to work stone, farm and form tools out of more resources than the animals around them.


That's all I've got so far, but I definitely want to expand on this kind of idea and maybe encompass all of the other races of Volos and the PHB, I dunno. In the meantime, rate what I've got here and give me your ideas on the various things I've talked about. Thanks for your time and have a nice day.

 

[aco175]

This is a good tie-in with the thread last week about race stat bonuses and doing away with them. I feel as a general rule you have each race that is better than the others in certain things and tend to dominate that area. If elves get +2 to Int, then they can become better at magic and find a niche in that field. Orcs get +2 to Str and become better mercenaries or such. When you start getting into the non-core races and things that can swim or fly would naturally become better at searching and spying in those environments.

There is problems in play when you begin to apply modern day Earth technology and science to a fantasy game. There could be no famine or disease and magic becomes technology to have things like self-mending cars and such. Why wouldn't there be assembly line potion shops that can make healing potions for cheaper then the 50gp in the book, or printing presses that can crank out spellbooks at reduced rate, or a spell Amazon that sells you spells for your book. There is another thread from a few weeks ago about upsetting the balance of the campaign with being able to make arrows for free from a magical bow and now you can outfit the country because you can create 5,000/ day and why would you ever adventure again when you can just sell arrows.

 

[Allistar1801]

There is problems in play when you begin to apply modern day Earth technology and science to a fantasy game. There could be no famine or disease and magic becomes technology to have things like self-mending cars and such. Why wouldn't there be assembly line potion shops that can make healing potions for cheaper then the 50gp in the book, or printing presses that can crank out spellbooks at reduced rate, or a spell Amazon that sells you spells for your book. There is another thread from a few weeks ago about upsetting the balance of the campaign with being able to make arrows for free from a magical bow and now you can outfit the country because you can create 5,000/ day and why would you ever adventure again when you can just sell arrows.

Yeah I get that, but I like giving my games at least a slight bit of grounding in reality. Something about being able to relate a game to our own world or history and thinking about the implications it would have just gets me going.

I agree with you that certain things just become completely irrelevant after a certain point. There would never be famine again since druids or other people could double the output of the crops, keep them from decaying, and there would be less area devoted to them. People would live longer since the quality of the food is also probably better, and with magic cutting down on the amount of diseases it would probably have a much larger impact than we could really grasp the scope of in terms of our own history. I still believe that virulent things such as plagues would spread faster than they could cure them, but It would have definitely put a dampener on it.

As for the industrialization of magic, I think it would be a bit harder than a magic supermarket, and it would definitely throw a wrench into the non-magic economy, but I'm neither experienced enough nor knowledgeable enough to have a comment on that. What is your take on that?

 

[aco175]

I still believe that virulent things such as plagues would spread faster than they could cure them, but It would have definitely put a dampener on it.

As for the industrialization of magic, I think it would be a bit harder than a magic supermarket, and it would definitely throw a wrench into the non-magic economy, but I'm neither experienced enough nor knowledgeable enough to have a comment on that. What is your take on that?

The great thing about fantasy DnD is that there is always bad guys trying to take over the world and worship all the evil gods that are trying to bring famine and disease to the world. A god of winter is trying to blanket the world in ice- great. As much as the PCs try to stop a plague it continues to spread since people are actively trying to keep it going.

As for technology ruining the economy, I find it harder since the players themselves are the ones that are coming up with these modern world uses to overlay on the fantasy. There are a couple ways of dealing with it. The peasants revolt since now there is twice the crops to harvest and they demand more wages. The peasants revolt since robots are taking over their jobs. The politicians create laws against the mass production since the merchant lobbyists are loosing their jobs. The crown puts a stop to it since migrants are flooding the country from neighboring countries where they are starving.

I find a single instance from a player in his local keep makes the game fun for the player and it doesn't change much. You can let it go and maybe even tie things in with another campaign later when the PCs find a bottle of beer with the mark from the old campaign. Did this once and it was a bit of nostalgia. You could also let the PCs change the world and the next campaign it just resets back to the basic way things always ran. Kind of like Planet of the Apes where the technology was lost, or maybe the junk movie by L Ron Hubbard with John Travolta.

 

[Celebrim]

When you start getting into the political and social implications of a magic system that has always and ever only cared about the utility it had for a party delving into a dungeon or similar dangerous environment from a nearby haven, you realize that you either need to vastly alter the culture and economics and politics of the world or just tweak the magic a bit.

I tend to go more for tweaking the magic a bit, but even then there are as you are noticing really huge implications to having magic in the world.

The good news is that almost every D&D setting you've ever encountered is culturally in the 19th century or so anyway, with just some knights and castles stuck on to it to make it 'medieval', so a lot of the radical transformation of culture compared to the real world has already been accomplished by way of simple anachronism, leaving you with only some big questions to answer regarding demographics, the prevalence of magic, what spells are you going to tweak to keep them from busting the economy, and how society responds socially and legally to the really big issues magic raises.

For example:

Resurrection: How common and socially acceptable is it? Do most people even want to be returned from death? How does it effect inheritance laws? If the barrier to resurrection is mostly economic ('diamonds' or some such) how does it effect social stratification and hazards of wealth and power such as assassination? As a push towards one possible answer to this, in my campaign a resurrected person is not considered legally the same person. His inheritance still goes to his heirs (unless he can show he was murdered by them), his marriage is dissolved, and his political station is no longer his. You can resurrect a king, sure, but he won't be the king anymore except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. This is because if you don't do that sort of thing, what you end up is breeding a lot of envy and hatred between people who might otherwise not have reason to hate. Resurrection is not treated as a cure all. If your brother was looking forward to inherit your property, he doesn't have to give it back just because you turn up a few weeks later as good as new unless you can prove he had a hand in your death. Your wife doesn't have to stay married to you unless they want to renew their vows. Beyond that, most people don't have a reason to return from the dead. You need a really good reason, some aspect of your life you want to fulfill that wasn't. So that restoring life to the fallen thing does happen, but it turns out to be a complicated thing with a lot of laws and social mores built around it. The rich can most afford to be resurrected, but their very position often means that they are least likely to be resurrected. In one subplot of the latest campaign, the king absolutely forbid the resurrection of a dead noble out of fear it would cause strife amongst the heirs at a time he was already dealing with insurrection.

Druids Shaping the Land to their Whims: But, can they really do that? Remember, druids are bargaining with powerful spirits that have their own agenda, and that agenda is not usually just supporting the spread of civilization. If any druid out there was just utilizing his power to increase the scope and fertility of cultivated land and spread civilization, you could be darn sure that there would a back lash from other druids that would want to maintain the balance by keeping in check the spread of civilization and protect wild lands and spaces. And at some point, it wouldn't just be the druids that get involved, but all those wild spirits and creatures threatened by the agriculture and the spreading walls, fences and roads. I mean some of them might literally be killed by that sort of thing. So don't just assume that because in theory you can do something with magic that it is done, because the D&D world isn't all in agreement about the march of human progress and technology and it has multiple actors with very different view points.

Healing Disease: While it's true that the D&D world has very advanced medicine, probably more advanced than modern real world medicine in a lot of ways and as a result people probably do live on average longer and healthier lives, remember also that this same world where people and things can magically cure illness is a world where people and things can magically spread illness. Again, there is a tension here. Not everything in the D&D world agrees that disease should be cured. It's a world that needs all that magical healing because the challenges of magical disease, sentient plagues, and terrible curses and pestilence can only be barely met by all that healing.

Magic At War: The better balanced your casters and non-casters the less of a problem this is, but at some point you do need to ask why military forces look like what they look like and are composed the way they are. This can involve rules tweaks (reduced range of magical spells, for example, or special rules for resisting evocation magic for units that are in formation) as well as cultural norms and demographic limiting how many spellcasters are available to take up arms.

Your real biggest challenges with magic tend to be limiting fabrication and conjuration of valuable goods because D&D tends to underprice those spells in terms of their level and cost based again on utility and not on economic impact, as well as dealing with issues like perpetual motion machines and their impact on the economy (and why for example someone hasn't invented an economically practical automobile). So for example, the ability to magically conjure a crossbow hasn't been treated as being all that great because in a dungeon environment it's really scarcely better than having just bought one in town, but the implications of being able to make valuable items out of thin air in terms of resale and its impact on craftsmanship is never really explored.

 

[Allistar1801]

The good news is that almost every D&D setting you've ever encountered is culturally in the 19th century or so anyway, with just some knights and castles stuck on to it to make it 'medieval', so a lot of the radical transformation of culture compared to the real world has already been accomplished by way of simple anachronism, leaving you with only some big questions to answer regarding demographics, the prevalence of magic, what spells are you going to tweak to keep them from busting the economy, and how society responds socially and legally to the really big issues magic raises.

19th Century?! Wow, that changes quite a bit, but I still think most of that would be irrelevant with the advent of magic (really just a whole lot about arms and armor/how they were percieved). That is something I genuinely did not know. That changes the idea for a low magic campaign that I was going to run. Good find!

Resurrection: As a push towards one possible answer to this, in my campaign a resurrected person is not considered legally the same person. His inheritance still goes to his heirs (unless he can show he was murdered by them), his marriage is dissolved, and his political station is no longer his. You can resurrect a king, sure, but he won't be the king anymore except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. This is because if you don't do that sort of thing, what you end up is breeding a lot of envy and hatred between people who might otherwise not have reason to hate. Resurrection is not treated as a cure all. If your brother was looking forward to inherit your property, he doesn't have to give it back just because you turn up a few weeks later as good as new unless you can prove he had a hand in your death. Your wife doesn't have to stay married to you unless they want to renew their vows. Beyond that, most people don't have a reason to return from the dead. You need a really good reason, some aspect of your life you want to fulfill that wasn't. So that restoring life to the fallen thing does happen, but it turns out to be a complicated thing with a lot of laws and social mores built around it.

That's certainly one way to go about it, but I think more so than anything else that the introduction and continued practice of resurrection would perpetuate the idea of this holy chosen class of people who are meant to rule. Sorta like how the Egyptians believed their pharaohs were eternal god kings, so too would I think these devout societies would think of the higher class of priests as arms to the divine being. They of course still die, but they truly live on until the very vessels they inhabit can no longer function. An idea I was playing with was the idea that a priest could be so devoted to their faith that they simply refuse to pass on, remaining in the mortal world as a saintly specter, or some kind of basilica guardian. As for how people would feel about it, pretty bad I'd imagine, that is unless their society had placed such an emphasis on the faith to the point of fanaticism. I guess that's the one thing I get out of god's being present in the D&D world. Praise is more validated, crusades more focused down on what is through their eyes unholy, and the tangible real world effects that this kind of magic would have such as saving lives or smiting the sinners would be one hell of a recruitment campaign. It would breed a theocracy in which the faith in this almighty being are pushed to their absolute limits. From the outside looking in this could seem like indoctrination, but in reality it's just the kind of unwavering faith that comes with the title as "god's chosen"

Druids Shaping the Land to their Whims: But, can they really do that? Remember, druids are bargaining with powerful spirits that have their own agenda, and that agenda is not usually just supporting the spread of civilization. If any druid out there was just utilizing his power to increase the scope and fertility of cultivated land and spread civilization, you could be darn sure that there would a back lash from other druids that would want to maintain the balance by keeping in check the spread of civilization and protect wild lands and spaces. And at some point, it wouldn't just be the druids that get involved, but all those wild spirits and creatures threatened by the agriculture and the spreading walls, fences and roads. I mean some of them might literally be killed by that sort of thing. So don't just assume that because in theory you can do something with magic that it is done, because the D&D world isn't all in agreement about the march of human progress and technology and it has multiple actors with very different view points.

I mean.... yes. Their magic bends the will of plants, animals, and the earth around them. They can call forth tsunamis, earthquakes, and storms the likes of tornadoes. They can raise mountains and bring down wrath the likes of disasters we can only imagine here on earth.

Perhaps I see it in a completely wrong way, but I see the process of becoming a druid as basically becoming one with nature. You have meditated in nature, learned the names of the constellations, you sit in the presence of animals and have observed their movements and behaviors. You know the meanings of their actions and what they say with the noises they make. You become a druid because you become an extension of nature itself, not the fey that live in it. There is no "balance" only the state of nature as it is and nothing more. I don't think the large enclaves of druids would have given in to the industrialization for a long while if not at all, the point here is that it really doesn't take that many druids to completely change the scope of a setting. Even if there were only lets say 6 druids that dissented and decided to set up shop in a few countryside towns ritual casting plant growth or changing the weather, or anything else. They would completely change the way that agriculture is performed in these areas because of all of the previously mentioned reasons

Healing Disease: While it's true that the D&D world has very advanced medicine, probably more advanced than modern real world medicine in a lot of ways and as a result people probably do live on average longer and healthier lives, remember also that this same world where people and things can magically cure illness is a world where people and things can magically spread illness. Again, there is a tension here. Not everything in the D&D world agrees that disease should be cured. It's a world that needs all that magical healing because the challenges of magical disease, sentient plagues, and terrible curses and pestilence can only be barely met by all that healing.

Magic diseases would be another thing entirely just as curses are (also clerics, wizards, and a whole bunch of other classes get access to remove curse sooo....), but the point was about natural diseases. People eating more fully and healthier combined with the amount of cleansing magic that there is would probably make most diseases fall of the map. The only thing I can see changing that is if a disease had a higher infection rate than the cure rate. As for the "not everybody agrees that diseases should be cured thing", really? So not everyone believes cancer should be cured, or that any of these illnesses that kill multiple hundreds of thousands in total should be stopped? I'd get it if it were bacteria since some of those serve a purpose, but nearly every disease throughout human history has only served to thin the numbers. That's one of the points I made up top as well, since people would live longer and healthier the population would also increase, creating a different form of conflict. Overall I'm not really sure what you were going for here.

Magic At War: The better balanced your casters and non-casters the less of a problem this is, but at some point you do need to ask why military forces look like what they look like and are composed the way they are. This can involve rules tweaks (reduced range of magical spells, for example, or special rules for resisting evocation magic for units that are in formation) as well as cultural norms and demographic limiting how many spellcasters are available to take up arms.

That's why I said they would probably make a state ruling on that. Perhaps only certain people get trained as war wizards, but the point is it would completely change the way warfare was performed. Magic as a weapon even in the hands of an apprentice can still sway everything in an instant (A 15 FT CONE OF FLAME IS FIRST LEVEL). I don't think there should really be any "special rules" in terms of evocation on the battlefield, that's it's entire purpose, instead there should be a change in tactics. If they know they're up against casters, they would spread out or use longbows, ranged cavalry or anything that allows them to take down the casters at a safe distance/maintain mobility. It's either that, or they would have their own casters try to counterspell, or cast some form of abjuration effect on the units. I could go on about this forever since HEMA and the like are my bread and butter, but yeah needless to say it would just be another facet to warfare that both sides would try to capitalize on. In terms of game balance it's hard to say, but history doesn't care about how balanced something is only who won.

Your real biggest challenges with magic tend to be limiting fabrication and conjuration of valuable goods because D&D tends to underprice those spells in terms of their level and cost based again on utility and not on economic impact, as well as dealing with issues like perpetual motion machines and their impact on the economy (and why for example someone hasn't invented an economically practical automobile). So for example, the ability to magically conjure a crossbow hasn't been treated as being all that great because in a dungeon environment it's really scarcely better than having just bought one in town, but the implications of being able to make valuable items out of thin air in terms of resale and its impact on craftsmanship is never really explored.

I don't really think conjuration is that big of an offender of this. All it really does is temporarily summon creatures and objects, I mean that's crazy in it's own right but not the subject that is in question. No, I think that transmutation would be the largest offender of this and completely change the way that manufacturing was performed. Apart from literally being able to change matter from one form to another transmutation can just transform the raw resources into whatever is needed. Need a bridge, well cut me down those trees and I'll just shape it into whatever we want. Need a mine, I'll shape the stone around an area leaving a pillar in the middle to support the tunnels. Need a sword, I just need the steel and I can form it perfectly to your specifications. It would basically be like an industrial revolution 3.0, the likes of which would take us thousands of years in our own history


Sorry if I came of as a bit hostile in any of these, I genuinely think they're great questions and loved the deep dive into them. I personally want to hear more stuff like this because it really gets me thinking!

 

[Celebrim]

19th Century?! Wow, that changes quite a bit, but I still think most of that would be irrelevant with the advent of magic (really just a whole lot about arms and armor/how they were percieved). That is something I genuinely did not know. That changes the idea for a low magic campaign that I was going to run. Good find!

Yeah, the arms and armaments tend to be 15th-16th century, but the culture, costumes, architecture, technology, social and political arrangements of most D&D settings tend to be early 19th century. Urban environments very much resemble Dickensian London and not Medieval London. You've got unified nation states with centralized government and standing armies, abundant coinage, and so on and so forth.

My theory on this is that there is only so far back into the past someone can extend their imagination. The Medieval World is too many steps removed, to remote, and too alien for most people to imagine, so when they do imagine it they just imagine the 19th century with castles. Gygax, a better student of the history than most, admitted that much of his inspiration for D&D came as much from the American West and the frontier as it did from anything Medieval. I could write a ton on this topic alone, and why I think it is true, but one tidbit that convinces me further is that as we march forward in time so too is our fantasy marching forward in time. More and more fantasy stories are being set explicitly during industrial revolutions, Victorian eras and even settings corresponding to the late 19th century. Eberron is the D&D version of this, having moved the setting from what was more or less Regency England sans gunpowder, to the beginning of the 20th century.

That's certainly one way to go about it, but I think more so than anything else that the introduction and continued practice of resurrection would perpetuate the idea of this holy chosen class of people who are meant to rule. Sorta like how the Egyptians believed their pharaohs were eternal god kings, so too would I think these devout societies would think of the higher class of priests as arms to the divine being.

So you are subtly shifting the conversation here from, "How does society respond to resurrection?" to "How does the society respond to immortality?" And I'm not going to get too much into that except to say that immortality is a big deal, and a lot of my nations are ruled by some sort of immortal figure or figures because their is nothing like immortality to provide political stability. As but one example, one of the nations of my world is actually ruled by a demigod named Pharon, who is literally the immortal son of the goddess of the sun. And yes, it's somewhat an Egyptian trope, but the point is that if you really could have nations ruled by immortal gods, they'd probably would be ruled by immortal gods. Another nation is ruled by immortal (or nigh immortal) alchemists who have discovered the secret of manufacturing youth, and political power is more or less literally distilled in that nation. And so on and so forth.

As for how people would feel about it, pretty bad I'd imagine...

I don't know why you'd think that except that it's pretty alien to your own cultural mores. But, if your immortal ruler is a provably wise and decent fellow, you are probably pretty much all on board with him continuing, especially if you can look at nations with less political stability or less wise rulers and go, "There but for the grace of Pharon go we."

It would breed a theocracy in which the faith in this almighty being are pushed to their absolute limits.

Faith? What's faith got to do with it? We're talking about a world were the gods tend to be daily active and meddling in the affairs of mortals and granting them magical puissance. If the least religious nation in the world was less centered on religion than the medieval Catholic church, then it would be a great surprise. The typical daily affairs of the D&D world should be far more religious than they are usually portrayed. Again, that's part and parcel of being unable to reach back very far in ones imagination.

The only thing I can see changing that is if a disease had a higher infection rate than the cure rate.

Part of it is a demographics issue. Just how many 5th level casters do you have in the first place? If you can only cure one person in 500 per day, then you might not be able to make a dent in an epidemic. There is also a serious issue that if you case 'cure disease' then your target develops no inherent resistance to the disease and is so quite possibly susceptible to reinfection. So medical knowledge doesn't become obsolete just because you have magic, although it's very important to note that D&D settings tend to have very advanced medical knowledge as well. But, beyond the demographics issue, there is the question of what disease is in the first place. The germ theory of disease that was ultimately vindicated was another (you guessed it) 19th century discovery. It's not at all clear that in a fantasy world germs exist or that disease comes from germs, because the magical theory of the world is still rooted in antiquity. You'll need to decide whether disease is caused by germs, bad smells, evil spirits, or something else. If you decide it's caused by evil spirits, then curing a plague involves a lot more than just curing the effects of the disease, but instead going after the root cause with wards against evil and exorcisms and the like.

As for the "not everybody agrees that diseases should be cured thing", really? So not everyone believes cancer should be cured, or that any of these illnesses that kill multiple hundreds of thousands in total should be stopped?

No, of course not. You don't have to go quite as far as Warhammer and Nergal, but in a world were there are sentient embodiments of disease then they will have cultists and servants and even aside from that you'll have madmen and serial killers that spread diseases for their own perverse pleasure. Plus you have problems like ghouls and werewolves. If your demographics are low enough you'll probably have clergy that refuse to cast cure disease on "merely" influenza because they are worried about what might come up later in the day when they are out of spells, and will instead try to treat what is treatable using mundane medical knowledge.

As for warfare, you should have the sort of warfare you want. In my game there is a 'Heavy Infantry' feat that allows you to form shield walls and fight in ranks with great efficiency, and one of the things that allows is that if you form a shield wall you get 'Evasion' versus spells that have a reflex save. So you can have heavy Roman style infantry basically weathering fireballs by turtling against such attacks much as they would a rain of arrows. Honestly, one of the reasons there are so few wizards on my battlefields is that they low level wizards don't stand much of a chance, and high level wizards got that way by staying off the battlefield. But of course, I've achieved that by altering and being selective about my rules, not only creating rules that favored low level fighters against magic but also altering magic so that, for example, low level magic always had a range of effect that was lower than could be achieved by low level slingers and archers. And of course my demographics mean that the number of wizards that can fly (moved up to a 4th level spell, BTW) around invisible with a wand of fireballs is pretty darn small anyway, and less certainly than the number of fighters of that level which is itself too low to make an army out of. If you have to make an army out of 2nd level characters, you won't use wizards. Yes, it might be different if you could make armies of 10th level characters, but you can't - in the entire nation of Amalteen where my last campaign started there were like 350,000 people and 1 10th level wizard. There are also some cultural reasons why wizards tend to stay out of politics and keep their heads down, and this further helps to explain why the most common sorts of low level magic items favor fighters and not wizards.

I don't really think conjuration is that big of an offender of this. All it really does is temporarily summon creatures and objects, I mean that's crazy in it's own right but not the subject that is in question.

Remove the temporary from that and then you have the problem: create water, create food and water, continual light, wall of stone, wall of iron. But yes, on top of that you have the obvious problems like fabricate and polymorph any object, and Gygax help you if you allow it 'Lyre of Building'. Those are things you need to tweak in cost and mechanics if they aren't going to be campaign breaking.

Need a bridge, well cut me down those trees and I'll just shape it into whatever we want. Need a mine, I'll shape the stone around an area leaving a pillar in the middle to support the tunnels. Need a sword, I just need the steel and I can form it perfectly to your specifications.

Your assumption that a wizard can "form it perfectly to your specifications" as an act of will is the big tweak that I've made to tone down a lot of this stuff. What I've been doing is requiring craft skill checks to get the results that you want as well increasing the time required to add fine detail (time isn't instantaneous, it's more like you can do hours of work in minutes), which tends to keep PC wizards under control. And what keeps NPC wizards under control is that Fabricate is a 5th level spell and in my demographics the number of wizards of that level which could actually flood the market with fabricated goods is too small to do so, and they tend to think that they have better things to do with their time anyway. In other words, the time and spell slots of a 10th level wizard is so valuable, that while they in theory replace dozens of blacksmiths in practice this isn't that cost effective because with the same time they could be making dozens of mundane swords, they could be working on things that the blacksmiths can't on their own make.

It would basically be like an industrial revolution 3.0, the likes of which would take us thousands of years in our own history

This assumes researching and applying magic is easier than technology, and I don't think that needs to be the case.

Sorry if I came of as a bit hostile in any of these, I genuinely think they're great questions and loved the deep dive into them. I personally want to hear more stuff like this because it really gets me thinking!

Oh, by no means am I offended. In fact, I love that you are asking lots of interesting questions. You aren't remotely coming off as overly aggressive. I enjoy the debate, and believe me, if you think you are coming off as a bit aggressive, wait until you see me get rolling.

 

[Allistar1801]

So you are subtly shifting the conversation here from, "How does society respond to resurrection?" to "How does the society respond to immortality?".

Not really my intention but you frame it in an interesting way that I hadn't considdered. It's not exactly immortality as we know it, but a full service until your natural end (like the pope). IIRC most resurrection spells don't work in regards to death by old age. Grated the lifespans of some of these races is a bit ridiculous, but the point is eventually old age would take them. I suppose the logical rebuttal to this is "you don't die of old age, you die of the diseases associated with it", but if it's a disease that is onset because your organs are literally decaying inside you, I don't think any kind of cure will fix that

I don't know why you'd think that except that it's pretty alien to your own cultural mores. But, if your immortal ruler is a provably wise and decent fellow, you are probably pretty much all on board with him continuing, especially if you can look at nations with less political stability or less wise rulers and go, "There but for the grace of Pharon go we."

Maybe this is an american thing, but we/I think rulers are meant to change as time progresses. A diversity of ideas (however it seems pretty rare nowadays) is a bit of a concept that is a bit baked into our history. Sometimes the ideas were shifted in the favor of the people, most of the time it wasn't and people felt the government was cheating them. I think it also becomes really important to get the casting right the first time in the case of a ruler that will only leave if they die. It's either that or you quite literally ask your god "should this apostle lead the faith" or some such questioning prayer.

Faith? What's faith got to do with it? We're talking about a world were the gods tend to be daily active and meddling in the affairs of mortals and granting them magical puissance. If the least religious nation in the world was less centered on religion than the medieval Catholic church, then it would be a great surprise. The typical daily affairs of the D&D world should be far more religious than they are usually portrayed. Again, that's part and parcel of being unable to reach back very far in ones imagination.

The operating idea here is that clerics and paladins have to pray to their gods and follow their faith thus breeding a theocracy/very devout populace that's willing to devote their life to the service of their god. Also, while I agree most of the daily affairs would be more religious than the ones that are usually portrayed I don't think would be the level that we would be talking about here. Their god is confirmed REAL, your prayers are actually doing something in the grand scheme of things. If that dosen't motivate your society to put the praising into high gear I don't know what will. Like I said it would kind of depend on the pantheon and what actual god they praise, but anything written in their hymns might as well be law, or dictate that you are expected to follow to the dot. I almost imagine it as if the Spanish Inquisition never stopped.

Part of it is a demographics issue. Just how many 5th level casters do you have in the first place? If you can only cure one person in 500 per day, then you might not be able to make a dent in an epidemic. There is also a serious issue that if you case 'cure disease' then your target develops no inherent resistance to the disease and is so quite possibly susceptible to reinfection. So medical knowledge doesn't become obsolete just because you have magic, although it's very important to note that D&D settings tend to have very advanced medical knowledge as well. But, beyond the demographics issue, there is the question of what disease is in the first place. The germ theory of disease that was ultimately vindicated was another (you guessed it) 19th century discovery. It's not at all clear that in a fantasy world germs exist or that disease comes from germs, because the magical theory of the world is still rooted in antiquity. You'll need to decide whether disease is caused by germs, bad smells, evil spirits, or something else. If you decide it's caused by evil spirits, then curing a plague involves a lot more than just curing the effects of the disease, but instead going after the root cause with wards against evil and exorcisms and the like.

I mean yeah the number of 5th level casters wouldnt be high, but at least in relative terms stuff like a 2nd or 3rd level paladin wouldn't be the most uncommon thing in the world. Of course their disease stopping potential is quite literally 2/3 people per day, but it's something. I also agree that reinfection would be a bit of an issue, however I think a certian level of resistance would be built up since your body had experienced the infection form before. A bit like how certian vacines infect you with the virus so that your immune system flags the infection form for destruction. I don't think the clensing would really ever go so far as to eleminate the common cold or completely stop the idea of infection (people need some kind of immune system to be built up), but in the case of seriously bad things I fell like they would step in. Also it kind of goes without saying, but if the disease is being caused by something that isn't bacteria or viruses and the like it wouldn't be eliminated by the cure disease thing.

As for warfare, you should have the sort of warfare you want. In my game there is a 'Heavy Infantry' feat that allows you to form shield walls and fight in ranks with great efficiency, and one of the things that allows is that if you form a shield wall you get 'Evasion' versus spells that have a reflex save. So you can have heavy Roman style infantry basically weathering fireballs by turtling against such attacks much as they would a rain of arrows. Honestly, one of the reasons there are so few wizards on my battlefields is that they low level wizards don't stand much of a chance, and high level wizards got that way by staying off the battlefield. But of course, I've achieved that by altering and being selective about my rules, not only creating rules that favored low level fighters against magic but also altering magic so that, for example, low level magic always had a range of effect that was lower than could be achieved by low level slingers and archers. And of course my demographics mean that the number of wizards that can fly (moved up to a 4th level spell, BTW) around invisible with a wand of fireballs is pretty darn small anyway, and less certainly than the number of fighters of that level which is itself too low to make an army out of. If you have to make an army out of 2nd level characters, you won't use wizards. Yes, it might be different if you could make armies of 10th level characters, but you can't - in the entire nation of Amalteen where my last campaign started there were like 350,000 people and 1 10th level wizard. There are also some cultural reasons why wizards tend to stay out of politics and keep their heads down, and this further helps to explain why the most common sorts of low level magic items favor fighters and not wizards.

The intent wasn't for wizards to replace the common foot soldier, but to act as a kind of lord from warhammer. One unit with crazy abilities that are capable of sculpting the battle in their favor and wiping out entire regiments with well placed spells. While I don't think low level wizards would be very prevalent, their use can be quite a bit more than what you think. Fog and other such low level area denying spells are quite simple spells, but most unbreakable. I get what you're going for when you say a shield wall that can weather fireballs, but I definitely feel like that would be the kind of thing a regiment of renown would be known for, not a normal grouping of foot soldiers. It's probably as easy as giving them the shield master feat as an effect. As for the "mages keeping their heads down" thing, I agree that they probably wouldn't engage in warfare very often, but from my perspective the most powerful of wizards would not only be the figures with the most arcane power, but also social and military power. Again, the utilitarian/destructive nature of their magic puts them in a pretty good spot on the totem pole (at least from a historical perspective that doesn't think magic is evil)

This assumes researching and applying magic is easier than technology, and I don't think that needs to be the case.

Maybe it's just my affinity towards the idea of magitech, but I think that they would kind of be developed in tandem. A bit like how the cycle of research is outlined, magic would start the process by giving measurements. Those measurements give us the information we need to make tools, and those tools give us better/more accurate measurements, and so on for eternity. Repeat until omnipotence/the goal is reached.