Gunpowder, fantasy and you

[Haltherrion]

Anyways, my point has never been that it would be impossible for there to be a magic-industrial revolution in D&D. Rather, my point was that is a setting designer didn't want an industrial revolution, magical or otherwise, to take place in a setting, then it would be relatively easy to make some adjustments to make it true. I am a fan of Eberron, so I definitely am not fundamentally opposed to a magic-industrial revolution. However, I think that many people who argue for one often do so on weak grounds that rely on fridge logic. If you want to have a magic-industrial revolution, make certain that the magic in question is both cheap to use, and has a direct influence on agricultural output and industrial production.

Personally, I've always felt that the main way magic/fantasy would affect castle design is not flying mounts but the D&D equivalent of a mid to high level party.

I'll acknowledge that it clearly depends on the prevalence of such parties both for offence and defense but in general, a classic walled fortification is good for 2D defense: keeping people outside the walls. If people can subvert the gates or go over the walls, much of the value of a classic castle or walled town goes away.

As a case in point, while the ancient world developed impressive siegecraft in time, it took a long time and was for most of the period, a time consuming and costly endeavor to crack a fortification by siege. Much preferred was to take it by treachery. For some of the period, certainly in the Punic Wars, commanders would also early on try to take a fortification by storm. It didn't often work but it might and it was worth trying before laying siege.

To my read, a reasonably high level, group of 4-5 adventurers/mercenaries, typical of your normal combined arms D&D party ought to be able to accomplish the same thing as a treachery. They should be able to scout out a weak point and penetrate it in a way to allow an army in.

Defensive parties would offer some counter measure but in a large fort or walled town, it might get hard for the defense to "defend everywhere".

A counter to this, at least for smaller fortifications, not necessarily towns, is to build things that look more like bunkers: self contained strong points with limited ways of ingress. You might still have some walled out works but the balance of effort and cost might be towards the strong points and less towards multiple concentric walls, for instance. I'd rather defend a few stout block houses connected by tunnels than some lighter towers connected by open curtain wall and courtyard.

Alternately, one could have light towers and walls, even towers open on the inner face (as was sometimes built). This might be a light deterent and readily abandoned at limited harm with the real defense centered on a heavy keep. Even then, I would imagine a compartmentalized center keep that allowed for interior defenses which would make sense in case someone penetrated the keep.

Put another way, in the presence of small, hard hitting raiding parties, I'd rather defend a few portals than a lot of wall.

Aerial mounts offer an interesting axis of attack. One could imagine that for any one attacker and any one defender, the attacker might be able to muster a large aerial force and use it to breach the walls but in general, it would seem that large aerial forces would be extremely expensive.

You can look at the normal cavalry to foot ratios and extrapolate something even worse for aerial mounts. Aside from the cost of acquiring and training the aerial mount (which is setting specific and possibly no where near what the D&D source books make it), they would still eat a huge amount and ought to be very hard to maintain.

I took a stab at the cost of feeding a griffin force based on energy expenditures of large flying creatures in one of my EnWorld blogs. Lots of different choices to make in such an analysis and different ways to cut it but all of them seem to suggest a griffin eats a lot more than a horse, almost certainly meat. I came up with 17-26 cows per griffin per year, YMMV of course. That might be practical for a small party or a lord and his attendants but even a decent size kingdom probably could maintain no more than a few scouting squadrons, it seems to me. So castle impact from aerial forces might be minimal.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

As to mills working around the clock: What is more cost effective: Having one mill that can process all the output from your land by working around the clock or three mills in order to process that same output during daylight hours only. If a continuous light spell costs less in labour and materials and actual currency than building two more mills then, by your own argument, they are going to take the magic route.

Also, note that inexpensive artificial lighting means you can work indoors during the winter, when there's less sunlight. This is more useful in higher latitudes, but it's still useful unless you're on the equator. Continual flame beats candles hands down.

Brad

 

[pawsplay]

Saying that all it takes a wizard is saying "a few words" is pretty much the same thing as saying gallery-quality art is cheap: all it takes is Pablo Picasso and "a few charcoal streaks."

Why are magical solutions so expensive? Because to cast it, you first need someone with at least Int 12, meaning 2/3 or so of the population does not have a reasonable expectation of even becoming such a wizard. Then they need to spend 2 to 10 years in apprenticeship to someone who knows spells that can kill people, turn them to stone, or enslave minds. In the meantime, their family probably dies in a famine or an orc attack. Finally, having mastered the basics of arcane magic, this person embarks on a career of study and/or adventurer, seeking magical lore and possessing magical lore also sought by other individuals capable of killing or enslaving people with magical words. Having finally achieved some significant level of ability, they are approached by the mayor of the local township.

"Master Wizard. So sorry about your family being eaten by hungry orcs during the famine. I was wondering if you could be troubled to create magical lights so that we may continue to grind flour and tan leather around the clock, boosting the local GDP by at least 25%? ... How much would you charge for such a service?"

So, how much?

There are good lawyers who can get you off the hook with a "few words," and surgeons who can fix your heart with some basic material components and "a few gestures." Don't expect them to come cheap, though.

 

[Haltherrion]

Saying that all it takes a wizard is saying "a few words" is pretty much the same thing as saying gallery-quality art is cheap: all it takes is Pablo Picasso and "a few charcoal streaks."

Why are magical solutions so expensive? Because to cast it, you first need someone with at least Int 12, meaning 2/3 or so of the population does not have a reasonable expectation of even becoming such a wizard. Then they need to spend 2 to 10 years in apprenticeship to someone who knows spells that can kill people, turn them to stone, or enslave minds. In the meantime, their family probably dies in a famine or an orc attack. Finally, having mastered the basics of arcane magic, this person embarks on a career of study and/or adventurer, seeking magical lore and possessing magical lore also sought by other individuals capable of killing or enslaving people with magical words. Having finally achieved some significant level of ability, they are approached by the mayor of the local township.

"Master Wizard. So sorry about your family being eaten by hungry orcs during the famine. I was wondering if you could be troubled to create magical lights so that we may continue to grind flour and tan leather around the clock, boosting the local GDP by at least 25%? ... How much would you charge for such a service?"

So, how much?

There are good lawyers who can get you off the hook with a "few words," and surgeons who can fix your heart with some basic material components and "a few gestures." Don't expect them to come cheap, though.

I think that's grossly overstated. For starters, you seem to be assuming that the wizard only undertakes his profession for combat reasons. In a magic world, it would seem that there would be those studying to practise these arts for reasons of convenience or aesthetics since, from our own world example, we know people pay for that. Do they pay as much as for an attack spell? No but the market for convenience is much larger than the market for mayhem, at least in certain settings; certainly was the case for much of earth history. Our lighting-mage could learn his art from these kinder, gentler folks. Also, in general D&D, you know the spell, you can cast it.

You yourself have allowed for only 2 years of apprenticeship in the lower bound. That isn't a horrible investment in time for access to useful magic (think cantrips for starters). How long it really takes and whether there are other barriers to studying the magic arts are setting specific.

Also setting specific is how close to subsistence the society is. In a low population, low agriculture capability world, you could imagine many bright lads and lasses having to weigh helping the family eat versus studying magic. But that's not the case for many settings (or even certain places in the same setting).

In some versions of D&D, continual light will last forever. Forever is a long time. Makes that spell quite useful. Makes it worth something. Could feed a lot of family members casting that spell.

That said, it isn't clear to me that continual light alone would cause a revolution. But factor in other spells, especially clerical healing and curing spells and one could see an extremely powerful attraction for acquiring these arcane and divine arts.

But how much can this really change a world? It depends on so many other factors related to uptake, availibility, aptitude required, even world history and time.

The barriers presented in most standard D&D rulesets and settings never seemed so high to me that were magic really available on the terms described people wouldn't use it more, especially for non-combat purposes. But does that mean your game must have a magic revolution? No, of course not. As always, you can simply ignore the issue, you can introduce other barriers that don't affect the players but inhibits spread (requiring a 10 year apprenticeship could certainly do it and with a long apprenticeship, what mage is going to take anyone without a really high int, say 16+; similarly, the gods might not have the bandwidth and/or inclination to take many priests), you can introduce a timeline and state of the world that hasn't achieved a magic revolution yet, you name it.

These arguments about whether D&D magic would spread are pointless without a mutually agreed upon set of assumptions (and I've been in more than one ).

As a side note, sometimes people try to use the D&D standard spell costs to decide these matters. Aside from the fact that all D&D prices are mostly driven by the need to run a game (some editions even stating that their prices reflect inflated prices of an adventuring area for instance IIRC), it seems plain silly to me that all spells of a given level will cost the same. Like anything else, the prices will be driven by supply and demand. Know alignment is likely to sell for a lot less than continual light, assuming they are the same level, for instance.

 

[SKyOdin]

Personally, I've always felt that the main way magic/fantasy would affect castle design is not flying mounts but the D&D equivalent of a mid to high level party.

I'll acknowledge that it clearly depends on the prevalence of such parties both for offence and defense but in general, a classic walled fortification is good for 2D defense: keeping people outside the walls. If people can subvert the gates or go over the walls, much of the value of a classic castle or walled town goes away.

Of course a small band of mid to high level adventurers can compromise a castle. A band of mid to high level adventurers can topple entire kingdoms or save them from destruction according to their whims. Adventurers can invade the well-defended underground lair of a thousand year old lich and overcome its traps, slay city-devouring dragons, and defeat hordes of bloodthirsty orc barbarians. Truth be told, there is very little that can be done to fool-proof anything against adventurers, even if you use vast quantities of magical defenses. This is a feature of D&D.

However, adventurers, particularly mid to high level ones, are not very common at all. I doubt that there are enough roving bands of adventurers around at once in a setting to warrant changing castle design around to take them into consideration.

 

[Haltherrion]

However, adventurers, particularly mid to high level ones, are not very common at all. I doubt that there are enough roving bands of adventurers around at once in a setting to warrant changing castle design around to take them into consideration.

It doesn't take many roving adventurer bands to change things. Moreover, wouldn't normal military activity similar to the Roman Era, early middle ages, high middle ages (most of the eras ) result in mid- to high level groups within these forces? These groups could then leave the military or, working within the military, attack enemy strong points.

I don't think they would be as rare as you suggest. Would it be easy to create these groups? No. But neither is it easy to make a large stone castle, easy to lay siege, easy to build sophisticated siege weapons, easy to raise fleets. But these castles, fleets, etc. were created repeatedly throughout history because they were so useful. Just like those mid-to-high level adventuring bands might be.

You say they are too rare to matter. I say they aren't. Hard to really settle it without setting some baselines for a discussion (which would be better put in another thread if you really want to do it.)

Just to be clear, I'm speaking of the equivalent of mid-to-high level adventurers. They don't actually have to be adventuring. Could be veterans from some of the Roman Republican armies. How would you map one of Caeser's seasoned legions into D&D levels? Might be an awful lot of "mid-level adventuring group" equivalents and not a few high level ones. One would assume, of course, that the Romans would have exploited more than just the warrior professions in their armies and have some amount of healers and wizards available as well. They certainly had highly trained surgeons and engineers.

In any case, as I stated in my post, this is how I see things. You are free to see it how you like I'd rather not argue it much further without trying to agree on some starting assumptions.

 

[Hussar]

On a side note about flying mounts.

Attacking a castle would be the least impact of having flying mounts. It's the logistical effects that would be huge. Imagine a medieval battlefield where you have lines of communication beyond line of sight. Intelligence on enemy troop movements that are minutes instead of hours old. The ability to move supplies or small groups of men massive distances in very short periods of time.

Effectively, you've added small helicopters to the battlefield. That's an enormous impact. A good example of this is Steven Erikson's Malazan books where one empire manages to gain the services of giant flying insects. It completely revolutionizes how they conduct wars.

Outside of wartime, again the logistical effects of flying mounts would be huge. Being able to transport small goods, but more importantly, information, at such a high rate would have very large impacts.

Dropping big rocks on castles would be the least effect.

-----------

On the effect of wizards. The thing Pawsplay, that you ignore is the fact that something like Continual Light/Flame is permanent. It never ends. Even if only one a day is created somewhere in the land, after a couple of centuries, you have thousands of these items floating around. And they never end. Most fantasy settings have a couple of thousand years of history. Now you're talking millions of these items floating around.

I think this is the one thing that a lot of people ignore in this discussion - time. You don't have to mass produce this stuff to make it have an impact. Small, very reasonable amounts will simply add up over time. Sure, you need a 3rd level cleric to cast continual flame. Ok. But, in the entire land, how many 3rd level clerics are there? Even if it's only half a percent of the population, you're still talking hundreds or even thousands of individuals.

And, of those hundreds or thousands, only one per day has to cast continual flame for the impact to be seen. This is hardly unreasonable.

 

[SKyOdin]

It doesn't take many roving adventurer bands to change things. Moreover, wouldn't normal military activity similar to the Roman Era, early middle ages, high middle ages (most of the eras ) result in mid- to have level groups within these forces? These groups could then leave the military or, working within the military, attack enemy strong points.
(trimmed for length)

In my book, the only adventurers likely to exist are the PCs, who only exist because of the peculiar circumstances that drive the campaign. NPCs rarely get over 4th or 5th level (in 4E terms). There might be only a few dozen level 10+ NPCs in the entire setting (depending on the needs of the campaign), and even they are probably not on par with equal leveled PCs. So for my notions of D&D demographics, the idea of a military unit of even mid level characters is ludicrous. Of course, my preference in D&D leans towards a major focus on the importance of the PCs. I see no reason why NPCs need to gain experience or otherwise follow the rules PCs do, since D&D rules are not natural laws. People with other preferences will probably produce different demographics.

As for your previous post:

You yourself have allowed for only 2 years of apprenticeship in the lower bound. That isn't a horrible investment in time for access to useful magic (think cantrips for starters). How long it really takes and whether there are other barriers to studying the magic arts are setting specific.

Also setting specific is how close to subsistence the society is. In a low population, low agriculture capability world, you could imagine many bright lads and lasses having to weigh helping the family eat versus studying magic. But that's not the case for many settings (or even certain places in the same setting).

Remember that in a pre-industrial society where more than 90% of people need to live off the land, it is extremely uncommon for someone to even have the opportunity to learn how to read, let alone acquire higher knowledge. In medieval villages, there were only a handful of literate people. The only people who had access to any kind of real education were the wealthy elite. There was no place in the world where this wasn't true up until the 19th century. If we assume that magic is a particularly difficult subject, at least on par with a college education, then there would be no way a peasant could learn magic without very special circumstances, and there would only be a few skilled mages even among the wealthy elite.

Remember, magic and alchemy were considered legitimate fields of study through most of human history. It is possible to get a pretty reasonable idea of how many mages might exist in a historically based setting by looking at the demographics of real world wizards and alchemists. There definitely wasn't one or two in every town and village. Of course, randomly occurring appearances of sorcerers might skew these estimates, but there is no guarantee they would know any useful magic.

This discussion is getting way off topic. Maybe we should fork it off into another thread, again.

 

[SKyOdin]

On the effect of wizards. The thing Pawsplay, that you ignore is the fact that something like Continual Light/Flame is permanent. It never ends. Even if only one a day is created somewhere in the land, after a couple of centuries, you have thousands of these items floating around. And they never end. Most fantasy settings have a couple of thousand years of history. Now you're talking millions of these items floating around.

The use of the term permanent is a little open to discussion. For the most part, any given D&D campaign only covers a finite period of time, usually a few decades at the outside limit. The duration of 20 years, a hundred years, and forever are effectively the same thing as far the rules are concerned in a practical sense. It wouldn't disrupt the rules or a campaign to say that these torches do run out after a certain length of time. There is also the chance of magical dispelling or physical destruction to take into consideration. So, I am inclined to think that continual flame torches are lost, destroyed, or just run out at around the same rate they are created in the first place.

 

[Haltherrion]

@SKyOdin

If you choose to limit the number of adventurers to your PCs plus some foes, that's perfectly reasonable but that's hardly how most people are likely to see it. This is what I mean about setting a common baseline

So, your view is consistent, reasonable and useful but it does seem a bit of a stretch to tell me I'm wrong because of this previously (to my knowledge) unstated way you handle it in your settings.

Regarding using earth magic/alchemy as an analogue for a magic world, I think the problem there is that earth magic/alchemy is either entirely powerless (my personal view) or of very limited, measurable power (allowing for other view points on this). D&D class magic is so much more patently powerful I don't see how you can use it as an example. I'd pick instead access to medieval universities or ancient world engineers; rare but not unheard of it.

I'm up for another thread but, if I may suggest, please take a stab at some ground rules to the discussion. Someone can always start another thread if they don't care for the ones you pick

I'll take a stab at my own thread regarding a premise similars to yours which I described as a "distortion bubble". I think it does have it's place.