D&D 5E How do you handle the "economy killing spells" in your game?

[DND_Reborn]

Is there a limit to who can wear plate? A strength limit or something in 5e I seem to remember. Not sure how many guards will have the needed strength if so.

I checked you need 15 strength. Admitedly I have no idea how you determine stats for guards.

Ok I found guard stat block they have strength 13 so they can't use the plate mail.

If you do not have the required STR for an armor, your speed is reduced by 10 I believe, but you can still wear it.

So your belief is that it would be impossible for our world to provide sufficient resoures that everyone could have all the basics - food, shelter, water, healthcare ... the truh is that if we had an efficient allocation of resources and smoothly functioning economies with an educated and willing workforce expectation from every person, there is no reason why - globally - we could not (within a few years) provide the basics for everyone, rising everyone above what is currently considered the US poverty line.

Bold emphasis added. There are too many people who are unwilling to do their share and wish instead to rely on government programs for their well-being. Very true, some have little choice and offering them opportunities would turn things around, but there are many who feel entitled and don't want to be part of the workforce. Others feel you get what you earn or inherit and see no reason to give away much of their wealth to support others totally unconnected to themselves.

And the current poverty line in the U.S. is WAY ABOVE what most people of the world live in. Many people in other countries subsist on a USD or two a day, but costs of food and other things are also much cheaper--it isn't a great living in most cases, but they certainly don't need the funds to be above the U.S. poverty line.

 

[jgsugden]

Bold emphasis added.

Then remove it. You can't change the assumptions to counter an argument. Yes, the wealthy and the poor would all need to change how they live in order for nobody in the world to starve, to lack healthcare, to have clean water, to have food, etc... but we're on the verge of a politics discussion and I'm not terribly interested in that...

My point is that in the real world, there are a lot of people with the power to solve a lot of problems. If people changed their priorities, we'd live in a Utopia. If all the wealthy shared their resources, if all the unemployeed put their unusued time to volunteering, if everyone put the Needs of the Many above the Needs of the Few, or the One..... Well, we'd have a lot less misery.

The same should be true in a fantasy world. The wizard or druid that volunteers their time to help the farmers, etc... would be the exception, not the rule. Magic is power, just like money in the real world is power. People do not share power, or give up the majority of their power often.

 

[Tony Vargas]

1) Plant Growth: If one 5th druid decided to "help the farmers", and enrichs a different area everyday, they could effectively add over 150,000 acres of farmland to a kingdom (the true answer is 183, 468...but inevitably travel time, vacations, etc play in).

Further, its a reasonable thing for several druids to consider, enriching the land is a very drudic thing to do.

So the idea of the poor fuedal farmer barely holding on in 5e campaigns with druids doesn't really hold up. Farmers would be the equivalent of modern agribusiness, with incredible productivity and crop yields.

Which drive down prices, enabling a minor population explosion. Now if the druids ever stop, people starve. Poor farmers, can't win.

This also means kingdoms don't follow fuedal population numbers, they should be significantly larger becomes food is more prevalaent.

Or, I suppose, all those nasty monsters with a taste for people could keep the population down.

2) Fabricate: No craftsman in the world can compete with a 7th level wizard....in fact, its easy to ask "why would there even be regular craftsman in such a world?". In 1 day, a 7th level wizard with proficiency can craft two full items in an hour and 20 minutes (needs a short rest for arcane recovery for that second spell).

Well, you'd need real craftsmen to train those wizards, I suppose. More likely, Fabricate becomes a specialty for commissions that have to be turned around all but instantly.

Now for context, by downtime activities, it takes 300 days to make plate mail. In that 300 day period, 1 wizard could make as much plate mail as 600 armor smiths. 600!

The inevitable question then becomes the smith:wizard:knight ratio.

It also seems likely that wizards are unwilling to do stuff like that systematically, they have arcane stuff to do. The game declines to model that - one could add "downtime rules for casters" that make it clear the spells/day thing is peak casting ability when adventuring or otherwise doing something vitally important, not something they can keep up month after month.

1) "There are just not that many high level casters". Is that the case in most of your campaigns...so would a 7th level PC really be the most powerful person on the planet in all of your worlds?

Maybe the most powerful willing to cast Fabricate every day instead of whatever it is wizards actually want to do...?

2) "High level wizards have more important things to be doing".

Now sure, sometimes the high level wizard (and again we are talking 7th here, not like 15th) has to save the kingdom, beat back a monster, slap down a wizard duel against his nemesis, research the next great spell, etc. And during those times it makes sense that he wouldn't be crafting.

What if just staying a wizard requires a lot of downtime up-keep?

Ultimately I almost come back to... yeah, I can always find a hand wave to explain why it doesn't happen. But it always feel contrived. In certain campaigns, they are magically restricted enough that it makes sense why it wouldn't happen. But for the standard dnd magic level, and standard level ranges in the world....I just can't see why it wouldn't go that way.

If you look at myth/legend/literature, you often see a mage or other supernatural do something analogous to fabricate - make an item appear out of thin air, build himself a tower overnight, whatever - thing is, by the end of the story, that thing is often gone, dissolved into mist, dispelled by sunlight, revealed to be an illusion, destroyed by demons, whatever...
...or turns out to be cursed.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I don't think Plant Growth would be a big problem. For every nice Druid who help a poor farmer, there's a nasty Druid who would blight the crops. It evens out in the end.

Better yet, a Druid could agree to up the food production of an entire kingdom if they agree to turn some land into a nature preserve.

 

[Immortal Sun]

Answers are of course, IMHW (In My Homebrew World):

1: Druids are a very closed group. Yes, one druid can fertilize a lot of crops, but there really aren't a lot of druids, and few of them are very keen on human civilization, with many of them busy dealing with the various threats to nature they don't really have time to send someone out to water some crops. It's not easy to go out and become a druid either, there aren't exactly monasteries and even if you do find a druid willing to teach you...you may no longer want to come back to civilized lands.

So all the feudal stuff still holds up.

Though to be fair I actually prefer to run more Renaissance-era campaigns, which only pushes Druids further to the fringe and makes them even less inclined to help civilized lands.

Nothing stopping a player from doing it I suppose, but I tend to provide small, intermittent down time and I have few druid players and even fewer of them who are interested in watering farmlands.

2: Wizards have better things to do, like investigating the magical mysteries of the universe. Wizards tend to be uninterested in the mundane "jobs" of life. Sure, a Wizard could do all the things you suggest. But...why would they? Now, if the King wants the wizard to design some kind of magical armor that does something crazy, that's the kind of job a wizard would undertake.

Also: I generally rule that Fabricate makes "generic" items. Yeah, it's clothes. Yeah, it's armor. But there's no style, no pizzazz, no detail work. It's just "yeah there's your shirt now get out." Even the spell says you need to make a crafting checking to put detail into it. That's where the "trained craftsmen" play into the picture. And quite frankly, to make something nice even with magic, you'd have to be a trained craftsman in the subject.

And then at that point you're combining magic-user arrogance with skilled artisan arrogance and yeah.

 

[Maxperson]

When you get to a certain level, defeating/killing a single goblin is hardly dangerous or suicidal.

It is a flaw in the system IMO that you continue to earn XP for very easy encounters, and as I understand it our DM doesn't award XP if the encounter's XP total doesn't reach at least Easy.
For example, a couple Hell Hounds (CR 3, worth 1400 XP total) would not be enough to meet the 1800 XP to warrant an Easy encounter for three 10th-level characters.

I think this is really a mountain(20th level) out of a molehill(goblin). This is a rulings over rules game and if someone is importing a single goblin every day for his morning goblin murder, and it's not even remotely close to rising to the level of an easy challenge, I'm not giving experience for it.

If this person is going out seeking goblins to kill, then he's engaging in dangerous behavior, because instead of 1, it might be 100 today. And that's if he can even find one that day. The whole scenario seems silly to me.

 

[Radaceus]

and aside from all of the above, we haven't even mentioned the issues regarding clerics and paladins healing and curing everyone.

Why does a paladin and cleric not just stick around at the watering hole and cure disease on the populace for donations to the temple?

perhaps, all paladins are gnomes and gnomes only swing rapiers with abandon?

 

[Zardnaar]

The problem is mainly us applying industrial scale production in a pre industrial world.

There's probably not enough Druids to do plant growth en masse. A wizard would need to know how to make armor, be powerful enough to cast the right spells and be inclined to do it.

 

[Mistwell]

I am curious how you handle such spells (or other ones) in your campaigns.

I do this:

And if my players ignore that and persist in asking such questions then I turn to this:

 

[DND_Reborn]

Then remove it. You can't change the assumptions to counter an argument. Yes, the wealthy and the poor would all need to change how they live in order for nobody in the world to starve, to lack healthcare, to have clean water, to have food, etc... but we're on the verge of a politics discussion and I'm not terribly interested in that...

My point is that in the real world, there are a lot of people with the power to solve a lot of problems. If people changed their priorities, we'd live in a Utopia. If all the wealthy shared their resources, if all the unemployeed put their unusued time to volunteering, if everyone put the Needs of the Many above the Needs of the Few, or the One..... Well, we'd have a lot less misery.

The same should be true in a fantasy world. The wizard or druid that volunteers their time to help the farmers, etc... would be the exception, not the rule. Magic is power, just like money in the real world is power. People do not share power, or give up the majority of their power often.

I didn't change a word, I added the emphasis to show why your idea won't work, most likely ever. So, why should I remove it when I added it for MY argument, not yours?

There is no such thing as a Utopia and if you want one, stick to your fantasy world. Of course, even there, people are people--and that means many are selfish and care little for people outside their own circle. But yes, those people with power (or money) rarely share it and are the exception. Often if they do share any of it, it is not enough for them to miss it really so they are happy to appear generous.

It is a pity. I am a volunteer, I work with adults and children teaching math and GED classes. It is only a few hours a week, but I know it makes a difference to the people I am helping--and thus many people who care about those individuals. I've lived overseas (also as a volunteer) and worked in prisons. I know people can be happy and get by with "less", but not many seem willing to do it.

That's my point. Of course, if you aren't interested in the discussion, don't reply. It's pretty simple. I don't mind discussing it or talking about such things (obviously LOL!).