D&D General why do we not have an arcane half caster?

[tetrasodium]

Magic makes firearms more likely, not less.

How do you figure? If Bob can learn a cantrip he doesn't need to carry around dangerous unstable gunpowder. Early gunpowder was not the clean burning reliable stuff you see in use today either. Early firearms were prone to exploding and mangling the user often enough to be a real risk due to insufficiently developed metallurgy. They didn't just suddenly start with revolutionary war or ww1/ww2+ tech. It's only FR style cultural stasis preventing anyone from learning them or issuing cantrip wands to their troops.

Even if you pick a date & say "this is the year that early/privative firearms were developed in this setting", cantrips, leveled spells, magic items & focus items would advance right alongside them. The revolutionary war or slightly sooner was roughly the point where guns & cannons were developed to really be the bulk of an army's military might rather than them supplementing melee weapons . The phrase "don't fire till you see the white of their eyes" existed because that was about the effective range of early firearms & cantrips are already well beyond that without needing the equivalent of a full round to reload them while being just as good if not better for damage. They were developed to that point because they showed promise as something that could be perfected & improved

There is a pair of modern technologies that nicely demonstrate the problems that firearms would face if we had magic. Photovoltaics was developed in 1849 about 20 years after the dynamo. Two hundred years later you know the tech developed from those today as solar panels & gas powered generators. Most of that ~200 years PV tech was so far behind steam/gas powered generators that it was little more than a quixotic joke or little more than a curiosity to wow kids & we know that because they were still a joke in 1979 when the most famous solar panel install was done. Solar is still ludicrously expensive unless you can amortize the cost over a period of decades. Even with that amortization they are still largely only reaching a point of being competitive thanks to the rising cost of fuel to minimize the gains from technology improvements in generators

You can take the old english longbow training as an example of how much time a civilization might devote to learning offensive cantrips. English males age 16-60 were required to train 2 hours every day. Depending on if you use a standard week or FR's silly 10 day weeks 14-20 hours/week is a significant investment & at least some of that knowledge could be applied to other useful cantrips like mold earth shape water magehand & so on. Not only would spells like firebolt & create bonfire or ray of frost be useful for most of the same uses as a longbow, they would be useful for cooking & preserving food or even to help with heating & cooling in winter/summer. The english didn't suddenly set eyes on their first ever longbow at 16 either, they would have practiced with smaller ones & watched/learned from older relatives much of the prior 16 years

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Your logic is backwards.

Wizards having a lot of thematic spells does not effect other classes getting few new spells unless page space is an issue in books.
Again the discussion shifted this way because WOC does not makethe class mechanics and spells of some classes match the lore they set up.

So no matter how they makean arcane half caster, WOTC would have to break their habit and both

1. Curate a spell list that matches the class' fantasy concept
2. Add spells that help define the class' fantasy concept if those spell do not exist

Le gasp! How dare!?

jk but seriously I think we just have different priorities, here.

I also just don’t think there is any reason to go from “this class has few exclusive spells” to “members of this class don’t invent spells”.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

How do you figure? If Bob can learn a cantrip he doesn't need to carry around dangerous unstable gunpowder.

Cantrips probably don’t compare to a cannon. Like...at all. And who says Bob can learn a cantrip, much less any cantrip he/someone else wants?

Early gunpowder was not the clean burning reliable stuff you see in use today either.

I’m fairly certain everyone on these forums is aware, yes.

It's only FR style cultural stasis preventing anyone from learning them or issuing cantrip wands to their troops.

Or not everyone can harness magical power, and only spellcasters can use most wands.

Even if you pick a date & say "this is the year that early/privative firearms were developed in this setting", cantrips, leveled spells, magic items & focus items would advance right alongside them. The revolutionary war or slightly sooner was roughly the point where guns & cannons were developed to really be the bulk of an army's military might rather than them supplementing melee weapons . The phrase "don't fire till you see the white of their eyes" existed because that was about the effective range of early firearms & cantrips are already well beyond that without needing the equivalent of a full round to reload them while being just as good if not better for damage. They were developed to that point because they showed promise as something that could be perfected & improved

There is a pair of modern technologies that nicely demonstrate the problems that firearms would face if we had magic. Photovoltaics was developed in 1849 about 20 years after the dynamo. Two hundred years later you know the tech developed from those today as solar panels & gas powered generators. Most of that ~200 years PV tech was so far behind steam/gas powered generators that it was little more than a quixotic joke or little more than a curiosity to wow kids & we know that because they were still a joke in 1979 when the most famous solar panel install was done. Solar is still ludicrously expensive unless you can amortize the cost over a period of decades. Even with that amortization they are still largely only reaching a point of being competitive thanks to the rising cost of fuel to minimize the gains from technology improvements in generators

You can take the old english longbow training as an example of how much time a civilization might devote to learning offensive cantrips. English males age 16-60 were required to train 2 hours every day. Depending on if you use a standard week or FR's silly 10 day weeks 14-20 hours/week is a significant investment & at least some of that knowledge could be applied to other useful cantrips like mold earth shape water magehand & so on. Not only would spells like firebolt & create bonfire or ray of frost be useful for most of the same uses as a longbow, they would be useful for cooking & preserving food or even to help with heating & cooling in winter/summer. The english didn't suddenly set eyes on their first ever longbow at 16 either, they would have practiced with smaller ones & watched/learned from older relatives much of the prior 16 years

200 years is an incredibly small amount of time.

Now we have electric cars and solar powered homes.

Now, imagine that gas is a resource only select people are physically capable of using, and you require one of them to build and operate a gas powered machine.

Solar power would have developed much faster.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm going to preface this by saying that none of this says that you shouldn't use guns in your game if you like them, but there are a lot of problems with the idea that guns wouldn't have to compete with the parallel development of the more mature & safer cantrips/spells at some other table as 5e once again tried to push for 6ish years despite them owning a setting that says otherwise since 2004.

Cantrips probably don’t compare to a cannon. Like...at all.

Canon falls into a category generally known as artillery that includes things like a catapult & trebuchet. Luckily we now have the arcane version of artillery statted out in exploring eberron

Spoiler

complete with this well deserved sidebar that makes going too deep into the damage aspect of this tangent somewhat irrelevant

And who says Bob can learn a cantrip, much less any cantrip he/someone else wants?

PHB168 magic initiate has no requirements putting it on par with phb170 weapon master. By that standard learning 2 cantrips & 1 first level spell are on par with learning to use any 4 weapons & gaining a point of dex or strength.. Alternately Tasha's page 78 artificer initiate is an artificer cantrip, first level artificer spell, & proficiency with a set of artisan's tools that could presumably be used as part of a craft. Telekenetic & telepathic are also no requirement feats in Tasha's that grant a specific cantrip & pretty useful ability.

I’m fairly certain everyone on these forums is aware, yes.

Or not everyone can harness magical power, and only spellcasters can use most wands.

200 years is an incredibly small amount of time.

It's a significant amount of time even for firearms. About 200 years ago in 1835 the first colt revolver was introduced, you might be more familiar with it as "the gun that won the west". About 200 years prior to that was the first true flintlock. About 200 or so years before that the matchlock gun appears in the 1400s making it the point where you didn't need a torch or something in your other hand to fire your gun since it briefly had a lit match held for you. Around 1200-1300ish in china there were a curiosity known as "hand cannons"

Now we have electric cars and solar powered homes.

Now, imagine that gas is a resource only select people are physically capable of using, and you require one of them to build and operate a gas powered machine.

Solar power would have developed much faster.

The only setting that actively has something keeping people from learning magic is darksun & the thing keeping them from doing it is setting specific reasons for enforced illiteracy for most of the population & vigorous efforts made by those in power to eradicate anyone who might have arcane spellcasting not in service to a SK or high enough status to get a loophole. A particular flavor of cultural stasis isn't a physical limitation.

edit:cold revolver to colt revolver

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'm going to preface this by saying that none of this says that you shouldn't use guns in your game if you like them, but there are a lot of problems with the idea that guns wouldn't have to compete with the parallel development of the more mature & safer cantrips/spells at some other table as 5e once again tried to push for 6ish years despite them owning a setting that says otherwise since 2004.


Canon falls into a category generally known as artillery that includes things like a catapult & trebuchet.

You really don’t see how this come across, do you?

yes, every single person knows what artillery is.

Luckily we now have the arcane version of artillery statted out in exploring eberron
complete with this well deserved sidebar that makes going too deep into the damage aspect of this tangent somewhat irrelevant
View attachment 133151

What you’re missing in regards to damage is that walls of stone don’t have 5hp. A really large area fireball does nothing at all to castle walls.
And using D&Ds Normal assumptions, that artillery staff is still gonna require a spellcaster to operate.
If it doesn’t, then guns just become magical in that world, and that world becomes a different kind of world than dnd

PHB168 magic initiate has no requirements putting it on par with phb170 weapon master. By that standard learning 2 cantrips & 1 first level spell are on par with learning to use any 4 weapons & gaining a point of dex or strength.. Alternately Tasha's page 78 artificer initiate is an artificer cantrip, first level artificer spell, & proficiency with a set of artisan's tools that could presumably be used as part of a craft. Telekenetic & telepathic are also no requirement feats in Tasha's that grant a specific cantrip & pretty useful ability.

Those rules are for PCs. Most people cannot learn to do any magic. Most people who can, can’t learn it on the level PCs can, or as quickly and easily. This is even more true outside of D&D, in most fantasy works.

It's a significant amount of time even for firearms.

it’s very small. Plenty of time for war pressure to accelerate development.

Not to mention that magic and tech aren’t mutually exclusive.

In most fantasy worlds, only some people can learn magic, and only some of them can learn powerful magic. In such a world, the pressure to develop the ability for every peasant constript to use a device that lets them kill from a distance, and to run a larger device that can punch holes in walls, is increased.

 

[tetrasodium]

You really don’t see how this come across, do you?

yes, every single person knows what artillery is.

It's a bit late to complain about having the gulf highlighted when you compared cantrips to cannons to start it

What you’re missing in regards to damage is that walls of stone don’t have 5hp. A really large area fireball does nothing at all to castle walls.

Correct, it even spells out that sort of thing

And using D&Ds Normal assumptions, that artillery staff is still gonna require a spellcaster to operate.

Actually a magewrights will do too

The next paragraph talks about how PCs are different

If it doesn’t, then guns just become magical in that world, and that world becomes a different kind of world than dnd

I'm pretty sure every screengrab I posted to this thread was from a single d&d book but admit I'm not going back to that last post to be sure. "d&d" is not limited to "forgotten realms".

Those rules are for PCs. Most people cannot learn to do any magic. Most people who can, can’t learn it on the level PCs can, or as quickly and easily. This is even more true outside of D&D, in most fantasy works.

are you conflating "being a sorcerer with magic in your blood" or "being born a dragonmarked heir" with "learning to cast spells"? I don't think that anything but training & resources are needed even in FR & it's certainly not something in the blood for other settings.

it’s very small. Plenty of time for war pressure to accelerate development.

Fair enough, but both would be developed during a war if both existed & magic has the advantage of starting at a more mature state.

Not to mention that magic and tech aren’t mutually exclusive.

I'm not sure why your pointing this out since that's the point I made. An army or nation. can fund metallurgists & chemists while also funding arcanists but one is starting from a point further ahead as well developed magic already exists in d&d.

In most fantasy worlds, only some people can learn magic, and only some of them can learn powerful magic. In such a world, the pressure to develop the ability for every peasant constript to use a device that lets them kill from a distance, and to run a larger device that can punch holes in walls, is increased.

Not the case for eberron or darksun despite the reasons for difficulties faced doing it in darksun & I'm pretty sure it's not the case for ravenloft greyhawk or FR. Can you cite some wotc owned setting specific support for that without talking about sorcerers or divine casters?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's a bit late to complain about having the gulf highlighted when you compared cantrips to cannons to start it

So you missed the point. I was pointing out that you were being condescending, not whatever this is in response to.

Correct, it even spells out that sort of thing

Actually a magewrights will do too
View attachment 133159
The next paragraph talks about how PCs are different
View attachment 133160

I'm pretty sure every screengrab I posted to this thread was from a single d&d book but admit I'm not going back to that last post to be sure. "d&d" is not limited to "forgotten realms".

are you conflating "being a sorcerer with magic in your blood" or "being born a dragonmarked heir" with "learning to cast spells"? I don't think that anything but training & resources are needed even in FR & it's certainly not something in the blood for other settings.

Fair enough, but both would be developed during a war if both existed & magic has the advantage of starting at a more mature state.

I'm not sure why your pointing this out since that's the point I made. An army or nation. can fund metallurgists & chemists while also funding arcanists but one is starting from a point further ahead as well developed magic already exists in d&d.

Not the case for eberron or darksun despite the reasons for difficulties faced doing it in darksun & I'm pretty sure it's not the case for ravenloft greyhawk or FR. Can you cite some wotc owned setting specific support for that without talking about sorcerers or divine casters?

It has always been the assumption of D&D that most people can’t become spellcasters.

Also, you know that Exploring Eberron isn’t an official book, right?

 

[NotQuiteANoble]

Wouldn't an arcane trickster, Eldritch knight, etc, qualify? I feel like most classes have magical options.

I think they are classified as 1/3 casters, since they get spells at a third the rate(once every 3 levels whilst a Paladin gets a level of spellcasting every 2 levels.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I think they are classified as 1/3 casters, since they get spells at a third the rate(once every 3 levels whilst a Paladin gets a level of spellcasting every 2 levels.

They also get cantrips, which Paladins and Rangers don't get (unless they take one of those Fighting Styles from TCoE).

 

[fearsomepirate]

It's probably best not to think too hard about how Invisibility, Fly, Fireball, Teleport, etc affect technological development, or the wheels will fly off your swords & sorcery game.