D&D 5E What high-level spells could warp society?

[kigmatzomat]

And you think that's enough to develop a post scarcity society?

Elves could maybe be post-scarcity. They do spend a human lifespan to figure out how to be functional adults.

But post scarcity is in conflict with human nature. We could be in a near post-scarcity world now if 50% of the world's wealth wasn't in the hands of 1% of the populace.

Halflings seem to have "chill" as a racial trait that could let them be near-post scarcity.

A world with modern equivalent health care is plausible. There's no vaccines but most injuries can be healed in a day or three. Its better, really, since Restoeqrion can cure blindness & deafness, Regeneration or clone can replace missing limbs and Reincarnate or Wish could even eliminate congenital defects.

Similarly if you have magic like Plant Growth that are equivalent to modern fertilizers and farmers aren't toiling in the fields but instead using "power equipment" (staves with cantrips & 1st level spells, ritual magic) to till the soil, pull weeds, water fields, harvest crops, etc. then we're up to quasi-modern farming.

Add in "eternal food sources" like the Alchemy jug, which spits out 2 gallons of mayo (a dozen eggs and 1.5 gallons of oil, which is 1 person's protein and 24 people's worth of calories) and the Purify Food spells that cut down on food spoilage (if you remove poisons, botulism goes away) and there is a much reduced food insecurity than you would have in a pre-modern world.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Just to comment on the original topic, one that always comes to mind is Clone.

With a few thousand gold pieces and 120 days prep, anyone can effectively become immortal because the Clone can be of a body younger than that of the target. You would likely see an eternal elite of the wealthy and powerful similar to the Methusalas in 'Altered Carbon'.

I'm going to use this as an opportunity to harp on something.

YOU JUST DESCRIBED ELVES. THIS IS EVERY ELF. It takes a human 6 clones to match the typical elven lifespan.

Every game should treat elves like methusaleh. I mean, an elf can save for 500 years to get a clone. If they do things like buy continual flame lanterns that can save them several gp per year century after century, clothes of mending that also save them gold century after century magic items that cast cantrips that save them labor or prevent spending money (who needs to buy spices when you have Prestidigitation?) , they can all afford to buy clones. And since the first clone doesn't destroy the vessel, so the elf can accumulate even more wealth on their second lives.

Humans need to spend 8,000gp to match an elf's first lifespan and another 6,000gp to match their second. It's just so much easier for elves to be eternal and stupidly wealthy. Elves just live a life completely unlike humans or the other "century" races.

Only gnomes (350-500 year lifespan) and dwarves (400ish year lifespan) would have a similar kinds of existence, but they are still 2-3 centuries of lifespan behind elves so things are dicier for them as losses put them at greater risk.

Halflings only live to 250 and are generally a species happy to find contentment and spend the rest of their lives enjoying it.

 

[edhel]

But post scarcity is in conflict with human nature. We could be in a near post-scarcity world now if 50% of the world's wealth wasn't in the hands of 1% of the populace.

It's this way because most people can't handle money. Heck, they can't even eat right or exercise. The average person is poor (in their scarcity mindset), mentally in shambles, unhealthy/chronically sick etc. etc.
No amount of money can fix that and you need personal development. There's no limit to wealth, just to limits to resourcefulness. With infinite mayo and magic to remove tooth and mouth diseases most of human problems wouldn't disappear, you'd just fulfill the lowest tiers of the needs hierarchy, and leave people with other issues.

In a magical world where high level spells are common, it would basically mean what firearms meant on Earth. The monsters would be extinct or couldn't pose a threat, and the most magically organized cultures would be dominant. If the magic was more sword & sorcery than high fantasy, self-sacrificial and evil dark magic could still pose a constant threat to high magic users.

Communications is another big thing because it limits how large the kingdoms or nations can grow. Interplanar communications enable interplanar societies.

Simulacrums would probably be the most transformative form of magic for every day life since it'd free people do whatever, and create a whole another society of fake people who lived the lives their masters don't want to.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'm not going to derail this with a real world economics discussion, but generational wealth and community-provided services are massive drivers in actual wealth, usually because these are what provides the mechanisms to teach humans those skills.

I will tie this back to in-game by pointing out the vast majority of elves, gnomes and dwarves get to take advantage of the "generational wealth" that come from having parents that are individually the embodiments of "accumulated multigenerational wealth" by dint of on average being productive adults for a century or so prior to procreation, thus having accumulated~4 human generations of wealth. This ignores any true generational wealth from the grandparents, which would add 4-10 more human generations of accumulated wealth.

Just consider this, if elves were real, if today an elf went to the funeral of a grandparent who died of old age, that grandparents was likely born in the 1300s. They would predate Columbus. It's probable they had children before the Americas were common knowledge to Europeans (or Europe was common knowledge to Americans)

 

[Clint_L]

I think cantrips would lead to a world massively different from Ye Olde Medieval Faire, so I can scarcely imagine what easy access to high level spells would do. It would be more like a video game where no one ever really died and adventures were just for fun. Then they all go home to their Magnificent Mansion.

 

[kigmatzomat]

It depends on what the other forces in the cosmos are like. The default theory in d&d is that while mountain-leveling gods/demons/elementals exist, they are somehow inhibited from entering the "kid zone" of mortals.

Is it like Eberron, where these powerful types are running around closing gates and stomping on kyber incursions before they establish foothold? Or maybe its the Eberron of the War, where regions fight their neighbors, using these Tier4 individuals as the fantasy version of the Invaders (a marvel comic team set in ww2 fighting the Nazis).

It could be a more ww2 setting, with the Red Wizards of Thay or the Scarlet Brotherhood as the perennial force of destruction. Maybe it's more "alien invasion" with Yuan-ti, Iuz or Aboleth trying to enslave the demihumans.

And then there's the 'things from beyond" that want to slip through cracks in reality to perform origami on our merely Euclidean geometry.

Earthdawn takes a variant of the latter two, with Horrors desiring to feast on Namegiver torment combined with magic that, by any rights, should be weaker than it is and could weaken at any time. This distracts the Tier4s from establishing their own supposed Utopia and instead focusing on just keeping things from eating the sun.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Going back to "Elves are Methuselah", this has the greatest chance of being why the world is the way it is. Humans (or other century races) start having societal break throughs, accumulate generational wealth and start to look like a new Atlantis and the "Great Elven Conspiracy" goes to knock them down.

The elves convince the century elites to see themselves as "purebred" so they inter-marry and become inbred, exascerbated by Clones keeping the exact same genes around for far too many generations. They encourage the elites to be callous and uncaring of "the poors" while also making sure to rouse the rabble to ensure class warfare. Then, when the civil strife has weakened them, pay off the equivalent of the huns to attack the periphery. The exposed weakness will accelerate the internal strife. Sprinkle some books of relatively weak black magic around and retreat back to watch the fireworks from a safe distance.


Oh, it might take 250 years, but c'est la vie. And not much of their vie, that being a third of an elven lifespan. Well, body-lifespan. The better to protect the elven way of life which goes back millenias. Why, the elves of Ur are on their 6th clones and have lived for nearly 4,000 years.

 

[MGibster]

I like to turn to some of my most favorite points from the 2024 DMG.

1. Rules aren't physics.
2. The game is not an economy.
3. Combat is for enemies.
4. Rules rely on good faith interpretation.

The rules are designed to ensure a fun experience while playing rather than offering a realistic model for how the world as a whole works. Don't get me wrong, if that's something you want to do, more power to you, but it's not the intent of the authors of 5th edition.

That said, if I'm a Wizard, I'm level 17 by the time I can cast a 9th level spell. I've probably got my own magical interests to pursue and don't want to waste a lot of time on whatever petty problems the local nobles have. Do I need money? Probably not. Maybe the baron can offer some political favors or considerations but odds are I'll exact a steep price. Is he going to force me to help? How does he like the idea of Meteor Swarm or Earthquake targeting his castle? (I can cast Wish and get Earthquake that way.)

 

[Chaltab]

I'm going to use this as an opportunity to harp on something.

YOU JUST DESCRIBED ELVES. THIS IS EVERY ELF. It takes a human 6 clones to match the typical elven lifespan.

I mean yes, it's true that elves live that long by default, but their whole sociology and ecology are centered around that. Elves seldom have kids and even more rarely set off to conquer the world. Plus, 'Clone' is likely seen as redundant to an elf since elves reincarnate after spending time in Arvandor. I kind of imagine Elves would find it gauche to cling to a single life by preserving it with Clone.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Here's the thing. A huge part of what the modern era is...isn't really about a lot of the things we THINK the modern era is about.

It's about things like:

• Farm equipment making it possible for a very small number of farmers to feed OVERWHELMINGLY ENORMOUS populations compared to anything prior.
• Automation and machinery making it so you can live a lifestyle once associated with being Quite Wealthy. This is the "washer/dryer/dishwasher/oven" effect.
• Metallurgy advancing far enough to permit the previous two things. Metallurgy is one of the few things magic in D&D really can't do much about; it can help, but it's not mind-blowing. (This is really the key thing that enables much of the rest.)
• Near-instant communication. Magic helps with this, but as it stands, it's not really enough to create the communications infrastructure needed for modern society.
• The discovery and harnessing of readily-available energy sources (mostly coal and hydroelectric) to produce electricity, which enables all sorts of other tools like the first two points.
• Modern medicine, which is one of the surprisingly few areas where the general cultural perception and the actual impact are mostly in agreement. We're slipping, though, because of stuff like the anti-vax movement.

Magic helps in a lot of ways, but in others it's not really that much better than the medieval equivalent--and could actually increase "medieval stasis" rather than breaking it. Imagine if the ultra-rich could have 90% of their need for servants taken care of by magic: wands that produce heroes' feasts, unseen servants that do the laundry and the cleaning and the baking and the brewing and the...etc., conjured footmen, "outfits" that consist of nothing more than a plain linen ensemble with an enchanted button to make it look like whatever you want it to look like, farms grown by a single paid druid and his entourage of conjure animal helpers, etc., etc. Many of these things would entrench an ultra-rich-nobility upper echelon, albeit one where most nobles either are powerful spellcasters themselves or (more likely) are weak to middling casters but have a handful of domestic mages doing all this stuff (e.g. a staff of cleric, druid, wizard, and possibly a bard).

Because learning to use magic takes a lot of time and effort, and because (just as did happen IRL) many learned people will hoard their knowledge and resources rather than trying to share them and build up a community of interacting minds, it's quite easy for a society to fall into "medieval stasis" not because people aren't curious and pushing boundaries, but because social mores and structures, the devastation of war, and the hoarding of knowledge make it so that progress made in one place is sequestered in that place and dies when its developer does.

But, to answer the actual question of the thread, I will consider only spells of level 6+, since that's what the game functionally classifies as "high level" spells, the ones that are sharply limited. In alphabetical order, by spell level:

arcane gate (and similar spells)
globe of invulnerability
heal
heroes' feast
planar ally (and all similar "summon a powerful ally" spells)
programmed illusion
true seeing
wind walk
word of recall

mirage arcane
Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion
project image (especially if there are ways to raise the range)
regenerate
resurrection (and any better version thereof)
teleport (and any better version thereof)

clone
demiplane
glibness
mind blank
telepathy

foresight
imprisonment
time stop
wish