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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5128207" data-attributes="member: 4937">Again, I'm not sure.  We will have to define 'availability of powerful magic' more unlikely precisely because it does include a signficant economic component.  The question the availability of powerful magic raises is:6) If powerful magic is readily available, does the decreased economic cost of razing a castle via destructive magic outweigh the decreased economic cost of building castles using fantastic means.After all, once we start talking about readily available high magic, we aren't just talking about the ability to conjure fireballs and earthquakes, but stone giant construction teams, using earth elementals as earth movers, lyres of building, erecting structures using wall of stone and wall of iron spells, floating stone blocks into place using multiple tenser's floating disks, mattocks of the titans, evacuavations using magical burrowers, magically hardened stone and wood, and so forth.  If magic can let you build a castle in a few weeks using relatively cheap means, then the fact that someone else can knock one down in a few hours is relatively less important.  The fact that the castle can get knocked down in hours after some minor resistance might still be a better result than the garrison massacred in mere seconds or minutes without any chance of resistance.There are two separate questions here.  How common is magic, and how common is high level magic.  As I said, in my campaign, low level magic is pervasive (anyone can be taught magic that could learn a second langauge, calculus, reading musicial notation, high school geometry), but high level magic is rare because only a few people can do it (people like the PC's) without years and years of training.   Few humans can get above 6th level before dying of old age.  Yet, at the same time, very high level and very powerful magic exists, its just not something that is governed by economics.  Spending more money won't get you more high level magic, because the supply is basically fixed.Having 'powerful magic' in the setting is not the same as having 'powerful magic available as an economic commodity'.</blockquote>

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