Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7542297" data-attributes="member: 71699">I think the "Gritty Realism" text in the DMG could indicate that the designers expect a slower spell cadence to result in a campaign that feels more realistic. Once long rests take a week, the strategic impact of healing and spells like goodberry becomes more manageable. If "Gritty Realism" is supposed to move toward "realism", then by implication the PHB version is a step removed from realism. That implies that underlying systems and behaviour might be wonky: it might not be possible to stitch the world back together in terms of reasonable systems and behaviours.Take a look at the list of <a href="https://www.realmshelps.net/npc/" target="_blank">Forgotten Realms NPCs</a> pulled from the written fiction. I don't know if that is a complete list, but it includes a score of epic NPCs. Contrast that with the estimated Faerun populations from the written fiction, e.g. nearly 2 million occupying Greater Waterdeep (the City, and the densely populated province around it). Goldenfields is a nod toward the use of magic in agriculture in feeding such numbers, especially in summer when the City population triples or quadruples. That aside, I think a central factor in answering your question is deriving from the fiction some guesses at the total numbers of class-equivalent NPCs (they needn't be character classes, but also such as Mage from the DMG). The Code Legal from Dragon Heist suggests they are common enough to require a law such as "Using magic to influence a citizen without consent: fine or damages up to 1,000 gp and edict."Honestly, I believe the baseline version of the world (i.e. without Gritty Realism) requires each author/DM to make their own guesses. One can with equal justice support many different conclusions about systems and behaviour. With reduced spell casting - either from the optional fiction like Gritty Realism, or from a close reading of the written fiction assuming the least number of casters possible, it might be possible to "settle" on a narrower set of likely world states. And magic is not your only concern: feats like Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter, were they available to a military, would bend the world tech toward them.</blockquote>

Verification