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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8184242" data-attributes="member: 93670">Depends on the setting too.  Some are further along than others.  If you've ever wondered why solar panels are technically "solar panel voltaics" it's because they were discovered/invented almost 200 years ago in 1849.  Just knowing something doesn't mean that all of the links in the chain between applying it exist or exist in an affordable state either.  The electric dynamo/generator started coming together like 20-30 years prior to that & it was largely advances in precision manufacturing that allowed it to happen.  Things like the light bulb & electric motors later invented made the generator useful years later. Hippolyte Pixii probably wasn't the first to put some wire & magnets together with a wheel or spinning thing, it just wasn't useful enough for anyone to care or it was too much effort to accomplish the result if they did have a use.  Eberron is in a similar state where they are technologically on par with our late 1800s early 1900s era tech but due to parallel development along a very different fork they are going to be dramatically behind us in other areas like metallurgy.  Someone may have invented a cannon or even an early model of portable firearm, but it's dangerous poorly understood & prone to blowing itself apart in the user's hand even before you get into the fact that it's not any better than existing well understood easy to teach bits of technology like wands that don't need you to carry a dangerous substance prone to blowing you up.  Knowing how to design a revolver doesn't change the fact that they are decades if not centuries behind on metallurgy needed for it to not blow apart despite advances in additive/subtractive manufacturing making the actual machining easier.  Rather than developing metallurgy they  may instead have developed simple enchantments that give the needed properties for a sword/armor/etc to what might be little more than worked iron or even bronze. For whatever reason those enchantments don't cut it for firearms & even if they did cantrips & leveled spells are still going to have a massive pile of pro's over the one con of "but in an antimagic field".</blockquote>

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