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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7640030" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>For example:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7640030, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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