D&D 5E How much magic do you have in your game?

[tetrasodium]

I voted 4th because "powerful" wasn't defined. It's like having a list of fast cars 9 cars from f-350 to a salt flats rocket "car" sorted by pricetag asking to pick one where you draw the line for what counts as a fast car.

3rd level is about where you run into the top end of "common" spells, think exotic supercars. You won't see them every day & might live your life never seeing one, but you know they exist.

4th level is where you start getting into things you need to have a lot of money or political power to get used(if you can find it). You might see one occasionally if your in the military doing special training just like those wargames we do where all the cool toys come out for show & tell. Major corperations & groups might even have people on payroll who can cast them similar to the quantum computers of today.

5th & up you can probably find people who understand them at a university or something but "cast them?... nah.. years back there was a prodigy who could cast a couple & professor so&so got to witness I think so ask him I never met the guy & hear he got a job working for....."

edit: this is in eberron or an eberron-like world in my campaigns

 

[J-H]

As a DM, 5th level is when the party acquires campaign-shifting spells that allow long-distance teleportation and reliable information gathering like Commune and Legend Lore. This isn't "Numbers go up" stuff. This is "Bypass many things that would have been very challenging or time consuming 2 levels ago" magic.

 

[cbwjm]

3rd level spells are quite a step up in power from 1st and 2nd level and that's going to be the level of spells most common folk know of. Not to say that there aren't a lot of high-level spellcasters in my campaign world, but everyone knows to look out for the wizard that can throw a fireball around.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I voted for 3rd level, because that's the highest level that most NPCs get to in the setting, so most people view those as the most powerful spells that can be cast. PCs of course go higher, which is why they are the ones solving the world-threatening problems.

 

[Minigiant]

5th

That's the top edge of tier 2. It's where magic can't be replicated easy with time, money, and/or diplomacy. If you have the ability to cast 5th level spells, you are a national celebrity within the movers and shakers if you don't choose to be hidden.

 

[Blue]

Common and uncommon magic items seem like a crazy concept to me. What should ever be "common" about magic? I am sure they don't mean it the same way I am implying, but hopefully you get the idea.

I always saw this as "if you have had the luck to find an enchanted item, it's common that it's among these easiest to make, uncommonly among these, rarely among these, etc.".

In other words, adventurers do not describe the population as a whole. They are much more likely to be a concentration of such things both because they have picked such a fantastically risky career but also because that career is often around recovering such lost items from dangerous and inimical places.

If an adventurer has three items, that's still much less than 1 in a 1000 of the populous having an item, because of how rare successful adventurers are.

 

[tetrasodium]

I always saw this as "if you have had the luck to find an enchanted item, it's common that it's among these easiest to make, uncommonly among these, rarely among these, etc.".

In other words, adventurers do not describe the population as a whole. They are much more likely to be a concentration of such things both because they have picked such a fantastically risky career but also because that career is often around recovering such lost items from dangerous and inimical places.

If an adventurer has three items, that's still much less than 1 in a 1000 of the populous having an item, because of how rare successful adventurers are.

Looked at it another way... The CR2032 Coin batteries in my ecobee's remote sensors are common bet you don't have & might take you a few tries to find one in a local store.

 

[Blue]

I voted 3rd. When you start to do things like fly through the air, return the recently dead to life, call bolt after bolt of lightning from the sky. Those are miraculous to most people.

But I don't disagree with anyone else - lots of good thinking in this thread about what "powerful" means.

 

[BookTenTiger]

As far as my experience goes, magic items in 5e are way more rare than in 4e or 3rd, where they actually had a price and could be found in markets. And I believe I've read that in early editions of the game adventurers were veritable cornucopias of magic items.

All things considered, I voted for 3rd. When the characters come to a village, there's a very good chance someone there can cast 1st level spells, and a very low chance someone can cast 2nd level spells. 3rd Level is only for adventurers and enemies.

EDIT:

I want to add that my campaign world is very magical, even if not everyone can cast magic. More often than not, the magic occurring in the world is not picked out of a list of spells or magic items, it occurs because the gods, hags, and mages of the world are magical beings who do magic.

To me, spells are mostly for PCs and enemies in combat. The magic of NPCs and campaign lore is separate from that.

 

[Helldritch]

I chose 3rd level.
At this level, the threat of Fireball or lightning bolt or Animate dead is enough to make people, especially commoners flee at the mere threat of a wizard (or whatever caster) angry stare. A cleric also get powerful magic too and could kill a lot of person just by walking into town. Remember that these spell do an average of 28 points of damage. A typical commoner has but 5 hp and a town guard has 11 hp. Even with a successful save, they die to a fireball. The spirit guardian spell does 14 hp of damage on average. A guard is likely to die and a commoner is sure to die. I know that I would not p*** off someone with that kind of power.