D&D 5E Dnd World Demographics Excel Tool - Rarity of Classes and Spells


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If you think too hard about this, you realize that a 14th level wizard can, with some planning and preparation, function as an elite-level instantaneous travel service (at very little cost to themselves) between cities, a service that would be in high demand, somewhat costly, and would probably make any national scale economy look a lot more like a post-industrial society than we might think looking at sourcebook covers.
 

If you think too hard about this, you realize that a 14th level wizard can, with some planning and preparation, function as an elite-level instantaneous travel service (at very little cost to themselves) between cities, a service that would be in high demand, somewhat costly, and would probably make any national scale economy look a lot more like a post-industrial society than we might think looking at sourcebook covers.
That look interesting for a fantasy world.
 


Well, that's before we even get into the whole undead-as-labor thing.
Or labor done by construct, enslaved elemental, hired fey.
We can imagine a dozen of archmage trying to open a portal beyond outer planes,
or a council of high priest trying to contact an ancient god,
or a group a valorous Knight start a crusade to go kill once for all a Demon Prince,
High level NPC can have silly ideas, get killed and start up some cataclysm that PC will try to resolve!
 

If you think too hard about this, you realize that a 14th level wizard can, with some planning and preparation, function as an elite-level instantaneous travel service (at very little cost to themselves) between cities, a service that would be in high demand, somewhat costly, and would probably make any national scale economy look a lot more like a post-industrial society than we might think looking at sourcebook covers.

This is explored in the Navigators of Kulthea / Shadow World.
 

This is an often ignored part of world building. Even in medieval (fantasy) societies there would be much more high level characters than most players/GMs expect.
And don't forget that those people will often not be spread out the country but clustered around certain cities or areas.

So even there the PCs are not as special as some believe.
And it gets even worse in Sci-fantasy settings when the number of farmers go down a lot and you have a structured schooling system which makes advancement in "learning" classes much more common.
 

Or labor done by construct, enslaved elemental, hired fey.
We can imagine a dozen of archmage trying to open a portal beyond outer planes,
or a council of high priest trying to contact an ancient god,
or a group a valorous Knight start a crusade to go kill once for all a Demon Prince,
High level NPC can have silly ideas, get killed and start up some cataclysm that PC will try to resolve!
Wrong focus.

If undead or constructs are essentially infinite sources of labor, the living people that manage to be serfs are the lucky ones. Most of them are destitute.
 

Wrong focus.

If undead or constructs are essentially infinite sources of labor, the living people that manage to be serfs are the lucky ones. Most of them are destitute.
If constructs can create new constructs, then everyone can have their own labor force.
 


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