D&D 5E How common are "petty" spell casters?

[EzekielRaiden]

You have a 5E source for any of this? Where is the rule that says studding magic takes a long time? Do you see a rule for spellcaster starting ages that says "you must be old"? And where do you find the cost for spellcaster training?

You are asking for rules in the edition that proudly says rules are for losers.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

You are asking for rules in the edition that proudly says rules are for losers.

I think that's kind of the point, though. I mean, you can choose to have magic be something that only a select few have the aptitude for (I'd do that too) but if you like, you can make it something that anyone can pick up if they're taught by anyone who has the knack.

It depends on the world, really, which is what 5e is going for with a lack of rules on the subject (even though 95% of their published adventures are for the Forgotten Realms). Still, they expect your world can be however you like.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think that's kind of the point, though. I mean, you can choose to have magic be something that only a select few have the aptitude for (I'd do that too) but if you like, you can make it something that anyone can pick up if they're taught by anyone who has the knack.

It depends on the world, really, which is what 5e is going for with a lack of rules on the subject (even though 95% of their published adventures are for the Forgotten Realms). Still, they expect your world can be however you like.

But people in the thread, and bloodtide specifically, have spoken about the "generic" setting. Which the books do talk about. They just don't use rules to do so.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Great example! You need a 4 year degree plus a couple years of medical school plus residency before you really become a doctor! Only 0.4% of US population are MDs (1 million).

Boy, wish we had some "petty" medical staff. One doctor per 250 people is a lot of work!

So its good that aside from full medical doctors here in the US we have 300k advance practice registered nurses (e.g. nurse practioners), 3 million registered nurses, 600k licensed practical nurses , 1.6 million certified nursing assistants, and 200k paramedics. Then there are the millions of other medical techs like phlebotomists, sonogram, xray tech, etc. Which is why there are like 10 trained medical professionals for every full MD.

Why? Because not every has the chops, the resources, or access to be a full MD. Much like a wizard.

And yet, there are several million people in the US who can provide useful medical services without being an MD.

If only imaginary magic were as flexible as the real world.

And in the "generic" fantasy setting that was explicitly called for? That is, one that is pseudomedieval faux-Europe Tolkienesque with ahistorical lack of various technologies?

Your registered nurses are the product of the modern world. They didn't exist 200 years ago, let alone a thousand.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

But people in the thread, and bloodtide specifically, have spoken about the "generic" setting. Which the books do talk about. They just don't use rules to do so.

I guess the generic setting is so generic that it doesn't care about these sorts of questions. PCs can do what PCs can do and NPCs can do whatever the adventure (or the DM) says they can do and why/how is up to whoever cares, assuming anyone at the table does.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

And in the "generic" fantasy setting that was explicitly called for? That is, one that is pseudomedieval faux-Europe Tolkienesque with ahistorical lack of various technologies?

Your registered nurses are the product of the modern world. They didn't exist 200 years ago, let alone a thousand.

I think the point of that bit was to equate doctors with Wizards (and other full spellcasters) and nurses and other healthcare professionals with NPC spellcasters and hedge wizards and dabblers.

 

[TwoSix]

I guess the generic setting is so generic that it doesn't care about these sorts of questions. PCs can do what PCs can do and NPCs can do whatever the adventure (or the DM) says they can do and why/how is up to whoever cares, assuming anyone at the table does.

Which is the way it should be. Any attempt to glean a "default" setting from the pages of the core rulebooks is a waste of precious internet time. Which is not what the OP has done, but a sidetrack that often enters these types of discussions.

There is no default setting. Any default play style you feel you're aware is merely the result of extrapolating your hyperlocalized experiences into an assumption of a more general pattern.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is no default setting.

Tell that to the PHB authors who put my favorite races in Fantasy Ghetto while enshrining the apparent "fact" that humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings are mandatory.

 

[Maxperson]

I've always felt that, although actual Vancian spellcasters are fairly rare, there's also a lot of magic out in the world that doesn't necessarily fit into the "I'm an X level Y so I can cast this list of spells" model that PCs use...

When the books say that a particular village may not have seen any magic for a couple generations, at least to my mind they're generally referring to the "Holy ****, that guy just threw a ball of fire!" PC-type spellcasting.
In most of my games, there are occasionally folks (say, maybe in every third or fourth village or so) who can use some sort of very minor magic, either through natural gift or learning, but it's generally not the sort of thing that a PC spellcaster would learn (although I suppose they could, and might).
PC magic tends to be the chant-some-words/get-instant-effect sort of thing, where petty npc magic is more of the ritual casting sort where you spend minutes or hours (or even days) performing the magic to get a lesser effect or an effect that lasts over a long amount of time. If a random npc has some sort of natural magical gift, it usually doesn't directly track to a particular spell, although it might replicate parts of it.

Examples I've used in my games:

A couple individual npcs of different races have had the forest gnome's ability to speak to small animals.

Most country folks will tell you they know someone or know someone who knows someone who has the magical knack of being able to use the weather prediction function of the Druidcraft cantrip to various degrees of effectiveness.

There's a seamstress/washerwoman in one next town known for her ability to get out impossible stains and repair torn clothing like new who hums ritualized lesser versions of the Mending cantrip and the cleaning effect from Prestidigitation while working.

There was one old mountain man wilderness guide who effectively had the ranger's natural explorer class feature and a magical knack for tracking things that largely replicated the Hunter's Mark spell.

Old Man Wilkins in the next village earns part of his living by putting a "good hex" on folks' crops during the spring in exchange for getting some of the produce in the fall. He can't cast the Plant Growth spell, because he's not a spellcaster, but he can perform a two-day ritual that emulates the second function of that spell to a lesser effect - instead of all crops within a half-mile radius producing twice as much, anything within the area of an average farmer's field will produce one and a half times as much. He also knows various rituals to lessen the chances of your animals getting sick, or to cure them when they do. But unless your character is a centaur who's come down with hoof-and-mouth disease, he won't be performing any healing for the party.

Mother Graves is an herbalist and healer who has proficiency with an herbalism kit and the Medicine skill. Although she can't cast Cure Wounds, she knows a few chants that will heal an extra hit point or two over the course of a whole day, or a sprain or a broken bone in half the time...

There's a blind seer three day's ride from here who supposedly made a pact to give up their sight for the gift of prophecy. While they do have a divination ritual they can perform at will, it doesn't really replicate the effects of any particular divination spell. They mostly advise people on when to plant crops or provide insight on difficult life choices.
However, their mystical sight allows them to replicate slightly lessened ritualized versions of Detect Magic and Identify once per day. And once per week, they can perform a divination that has actual game effects - when asked a specific question, they can use a generic locate effect to find a person, place or object, perform a sort of lesser version of Legend Lore to provide various facts, and even give the person asking the question a single automatic success on one roll related to the issue.

Actual "hedge wizards" or "witches" that can cast spells and or make healing potions are fairly rare, and I generally make each of them up as a monster stat block rather than using the PC rules, since they generally only know utility spells, tend to have a lot of cantrips and I often choose their spells from more than one class's list.

First I'd like to say that's a cool way to run things and I would have a great time in that setting. That said, 5e is written in natural language, so when they say a remote village has not seen any magic in generations, they mean ANY magic, not just spellcasters lobbing fireballs.

 

[Maxperson]

You have a 5E source for any of this? Where is the rule that says studding magic takes a long time? Do you see a rule for spellcaster starting ages that says "you must be old"? And where do you find the cost for spellcaster training?

This is in the 5e wizard class description.

"Some aspire to become like the gods, shaping reality itself. Though the casting of a typical spell requires merely the utterance of a few strange
words, fleeting gestures, and sometimes a pinch or clump of exotic materials, these surface components barely hint at the expertise attained after years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study."