D&D General Is there a D&D setting that actually works how it would with access to D&D magic?

The published adventures are not representative of the world as a whole. They cover exceptional events more or less by definition, and focus on the activities of exceptional people.
There's almost always multiple casters in even podunk villages. Compare that to today where there's often not a GP, let alone a specialist like an OBGYN in areas.

D&D wants to pretend it's low magic to let people imagine it's Tolkein. The reality of the setting and published material doesn't reflect that. Sort of like how in 1st edition magic items were "rare" then you'd pull double digit permanent items out of a module, and if you actually rolled per the treasure tables it was clear that magic items were not.
 

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Tales and Chronicles

Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
I prefer a society like in Dragon Age; mages are somewhat common, but because of a specific taboo, spellcasters are really controlled and feared. In this case, even with easy access to magic, the actual effect on society is quite small because it is either hoarded in secrets or held in check by common superstitions of the masses.
 


UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
There's almost always multiple casters in even podunk villages. Compare that to today where there's often not a GP, let alone a specialist like an OBGYN in areas.
I am not sure that this is true of recent adventure paths. As for the lack of local GP services, that is a US issue, there are 4 or 5 GP practices with 10 miles of where I live.

D&D wants to pretend it's low magic to let people imagine it's Tolkein. The reality of the setting and published material doesn't reflect that. Sort of like how in 1st edition magic items were "rare" then you'd pull double digit permanent items out of a module, and if you actually rolled per the treasure tables it was clear that magic items were not.
That did appear to be the case for Forgotten Realms, but it does not have to be for an individual DM. Though I think 5e can work well with no magic weapons or items.
 

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
I am not sure that this is true of recent adventure paths. As for the lack of local GP services, that is a US issue, there are 4 or 5 GP practices with 10 miles of where I live.


That did appear to be the case for Forgotten Realms, but it does not have to be for an individual DM. Though I think 5e can work well with no magic weapons or items.
even in the US you need to get into some of the more extreme rural areas where the nearest hardware store/home depot might be a 30-60 min drive between livestock crops trees & just empty nature, possibly because you need to drive through some other town or city before you can get to a highway. There's also some degree of former boom towns gone bust in some areas where the mill/mine/factory/etc closed down & the town built around it with nothing else slowly collapses. Doctors aren't setting up in those places for the same reason stores aren't either
 


Amrûnril

Adventurer
How common spellcasters are will (and should) vary dramatically from setting to setting. It strikes me, though, that the PHB and DMG suggest a lower baseline than is often assumed. These books make a point of emphasizing that not every priest is a Cleric, nor every travelling musician a Bard, and they describe a level 5 character as a hero of the realm. I don't know how this should weigh against the conventions of published adventures, or against anecdotes about what's common in homebrew settings, but it's definitely worth considering.
 

UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
so assumeing a none murder world nor magic industrial revolution what do we get exactly?
A lot really depends on assumption. If magic is rare then magic items are rare and the PC's are rare and power beings.
Magic may require a lot of maths, memorisation of arcane rituals, esoteric words of power and the lore concerning their use. There may an organised scholarship magic users but given the time and learning to become a magic user the most of them come from the upper classes and given a social taboo on gentlemen working with their hands there may be very few magic items but quite a lot of magic spells and arcane rituals lying about in old libraries and scriptoria.

On a different set of assumptions, Magic may require a strong grounding in blacksmithing and alchemy before you get to the fun stuff so you end up with Eberron. Lots of magical knickknacks lying about for a relative scarcity of spells and spell casters.

Just because the books have about a third of the page count in spell descriptions, the world need to be dominated by spells or spell casters.

I don't think that it is useful to try and extrapolate from a set of assumptions to a final world state. First off, that is pretty much beyond anybody. Which is why people are so crap at working out the full implications of innovate and society changing tech. I am pretty sure that the inventors of the TCP/IP protocol envisioned cat memes and Tiktok videos.

You are better off deciding where your end point is; and working backwards from there.


Supposing you want some kind of Modern Arcana setting. Like the Dresden Files, so magic works but it screws up modern technology. The more modern and electronic the more it screws it up.
Now, is this because the magic users are actually innately inefficient in their spell work and generate a lot of EMP noise. So can you track active casting by monitoring for EM pulses? Does it have unique characteristics?

May be gnome casters are more efficient and less noisy and their casting works fine with modern tech.
 


ECMO3

Hero
You've made the assumption that spellcasting is rather common, despite the evidence that it's not
I would say spellcasters in D&D are more common than say Electrical Engineers in modern society and look at everything Electrical Engineers have brought us.

Also in some areas spell casting is common. In Halrua in the Forgotten Realms a third of the population are wizards.
 

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