In A World Where Magic Exists...

[Heathen72]

I just wanted to say that in my mind's ear this thread's title is read out by that movie trailer voice over guy. You know the one.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Once Crasus went to the Oracle, before his war with Julius Caesar. The Oracle did say him: "if you both go to war, a great roman man will be defeated". Yeah. Go figure.

Ah. You've got two men with similar names confused. You're thinking of Croesus and the oracle ("If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed."). Caesar's ally Crassus never went to war with him (that was Pompey, the third man in the (first) Triumvirate) and instead managed to lose his legions and his life in a display of inept generalship at Carrhae.

Sorry for the digression. On the epistemology, my favourite combination is adding Goedel to the Uncertainty Principle and Chaos Theory. The first says that in any system large enough to encompass arithmetic, there are unknowables. The second puts an absolute resolution limit on what you can know. And the third says that any uncertainties in systems with second or higher order interactions can baloon out of control. Or in short: You can't know everything. Even what you can know is limited. Limited knowledge becomes obselete over time.

And just adding to the teleportation tangent, a 17th level wizard (needed to cast 9th level spells) has had four stat bumps. He can also trivially afford a +4 Int item (16,000 gp) or even a +6 Int item (36,000 gp). Meaning that he can easily gain ten points to his Int over 17 levels for the purpose of casting. A starting int of 10 (or even 9 with a family heirloom for +2 Int) would therefore be enough for the Teleportation Circle.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Okay, what does that have to do with superstition in an age where magic is as common as electricity and cell phones and TV?

 

[Achan hiArusa]

I'm not quoting all that:

And no intrepid psion couldn't find a way around those limitations. I can see a group of adventurers finding a way around it all.

Oh, let's see what D&D campaign has no psionics, Forgotten Realms/no, Greyhawk/no, Eberron/no, Dark Sun/oh dear God no, Ravenloft/no (even though the Mists would prevent anything like that from happening in the first place), Earth from the Historical References yes/no (depending on the campaign). About the only ones are Gothic Earth and Mystara, but Mystara is because it comes from the BECMI game.

So let's see, a spell that requires a 19 intelligence isn't the rough equivalent of Advanced Calculus or Relativity. Okay...

You stated how Eberron is the most likely campaign to make use of magic like that. And it has a low number of high level characters. Coincidence?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I just wanted to say that in my mind's ear this thread's title is read out by that movie trailer voice over guy. You know the one.

The late, great Don LaFontaine.

I bet Ted Williams (the homeless dude, not the deceased MLB legend) could do it pretty well, though.

 

[triqui]

I'm not quoting all that:

And no intrepid psion couldn't find a way around those limitations. I can see a group of adventurers finding a way around it all.

]
Sure. Just that this very same group of adventurers would have a MUCH easier time just plundering a galleon. And they'll plunder 150 tons of gold, instead of diverting the psion's maximum load, which is something in the low hundreds of pounds at best. So whatever amount of gold a high level group of adventurers might steal from a circle of teleport, it PALES in comparison to what that same group of high level adventurers might steal from a galleon. Your point is completelly stupid. Sure, it's *possible* that some high powered group of Somalians Special Forces (??) might go into the main office of Toyota and steal *one* car that was going to be teleported from Tokio to Berlin. But compare it to the easiness of stealing a ship with DOZENS of them in the sea, it's just absurd.

Oh, let's see what D&D campaign has no psionics,[...]

Those aren't campaigns, those are settings. A campaign is a serie of adventures played in a given game table. None of the *campaigns* I've played in Forgotten Realms *setting* have had psionics, but one. That's less than 10% of them.

Psionics have been optional in most settings (all of them but Dark Sun) for a loooong time.

So let's see, a spell that requires a 19 intelligence isn't the rough equivalent of Advanced Calculus or Relativity. Okay...

No, what I said is that finding that the cost of 5 galleys and 2 years of trading is higher than 2 circles of teleport is a trivial issue compared to Calculus. The trader that realize this (and anyone with three digits in IQ would do) does not need to cast the spell himself: he pays for it. You have even the cost listed in the PHB, go figure. In a world where magic is as common as electricity, it's easy as pie to get it.

Plus as someone said: a wizard with 19 intelligence is just someone barely able to cast spells, with a +6 INT headband. The only problem is the level. But in several worlds where magic is as common as electricity, it's not *cough*forgotten*cough*. There's no sigle city, organization, guild or faction in Forgotten that do not have at least a *dozen* of spellcasters able to cast that. Anyone with lvl 17 HAS 19 intelligence. Assuming the commoner set of stats, and giving the higher one (a mere 13) to int, including the 4 bumps through levels (4-8-12-16), and a incredibly cheap +2 INT headband, you have enough intelligence to cast 9th level spells.

You stated how Eberron is the most likely campaign to make use of magic like that. And it has a low number of high level characters. Coincidence?

No, it's not coincidence. It's the only setting that used common sense to be built, so the designer decided that in a world where magic is common, the high level spellcasters shouldn't exist, becouse they would own the world. Forgotten realms have high level spellcasters, and magic everywhere, and that's why it *does not have any sense*. There's no point Cormyr make mundane royal trade routes when they have high level casters in service of the king that might do teleportation circles. If Felipe II could teleport the gold from Habana to Sevilla, he would do so instead of risking thousands of tons of gold to the pirates and weather. Azoun IV has the chance to do so, but he doesn't. Becouse the designers of the world didn't realize the real effect such common magic would have.

Keith Baker did, however. And his world reflects what a world with common magic would look like. Tolkien also realized what effect would have "magic is everywhere", he didn't like it, and that's why he greatly reduced what spellcasters can do, to the point that the mightiest spellcaster in his novel, Gandalf, needed help from a Giant Eagle to escape from a tower, becouse he could not even fly (much less teleport)

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm not quoting all that:

And no intrepid psion couldn't find a way around those limitations. I can see a group of adventurers finding a way around it all.

Of course they can. But any group of adventurers that can find a way round that can easily steal a galleon.

Oh, let's see what D&D campaign has no psionics,

The current ones I'm playing in (if you ignore 4e fitting the monk under the heading of psionic) and current ones I'm running?

So let's see, a spell that requires a 19 intelligence

But it doesn't. It requries a 13 intelligence and a 36,000gp item to provide the extra +6 (a tiny capital cost by comparison). That 13 intelligence belongs to someone who has reached level 17 and thus has four additional stat points to spread around - which a wizard is likely to put into intelligence. So if you want odds, anyone who can cast 0th level spells unaided at level 1 should be able to cast ninth level spells at level 17. You just need to have rolled Int 10+ (technically you can do it on Int 9 or even lower with some strong magic such as Wish or tomes - but such a person would almost certainly not become a wizard). That's more than half the population.

isn't the rough equivalent of Advanced Calculus or Relativity.

You mean something that dozens of people per year at each university with a maths or physics department learn? You don't need Einstein to solve relativistic equations. You just need a bright and trained person who knows what to key into a computer - and let the computer do the number crunching. (I speak as someone with a maths degree who is quite capable of handling both and some quantum physics into the bargain).

Now if you're restricting to a pencil and paper, that's another story. But that would be daft for almost any real world application. In the same way not using a stat booster would be daft.

You stated how Eberron is the most likely campaign to make use of magic like that. And it has a low number of high level characters. Coincidence?

Not at all. Eberron was set up rather than grew. And Keith Baker realised that high level magic used intelligently would break the world. Which is why the number of high level characters is low - to allow for a workable world with intelligent magic use.

 

[the Jester]

In a world where magic is as everyday as electricity and TV is in the modern age, can there truly be such a thing as superstition?

Well, how many people have weird superstitions about technology?

How many people really understand how electricity works, or how we generate it from wind power? Look at controversies like nuclear power or intelligent design and you can see great examples of superstitious nonsense regarding science in our own world on a daily basis.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Well, how many people have weird superstitions about technology?

How many people really understand how electricity works, or how we generate it from wind power? Look at controversies like nuclear power or intelligent design and you can see great examples of superstitious nonsense regarding science in our own world on a daily basis.

I don't think that's the same thing as superstition. That's simply not knowing how something works and taking something for granted. And many people can overcome that. Not many people can overcome a superstitions belief.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Learning something is NOT the same thing as developing it. It is far more difficult to invent something. We have Euler to thank for systemizing Calculus so it can be learned in a University setting. If it were as easy to develop as it is to learn, then the ancient Greeks, Indians, or the Muslims would have thought of it when they developed other branches of mathematics. And the Intelligence boosting items are irrelevant, because it still doesn't change the fact that it still takes a 19 intelligence even if you need to boost it in one manner or another. I'm sure if I had a +6 intelligence boosting item, teaching high school chemistry would be much easier if I gave it to my students.

You would have to have a mage who has developed enough ranks in Profession (merchant) and have learn 9th level spells to be able to keep up with it. Any one with that level of ability in magic will have specialized arcane terminology and would either be a ivory tower type or just a lifelong adventurer and thus would not be able to communicate easily with your Joe Merchant and Joe Merchant has a lot of concerns that would easily bore a master of the arcane arts, so it would take someone with the abilities of both and still he would have to have an epiphany. There are lots of simple inventions (bicycles, etc) that weren't developed until the modern day just because no one thought of it. Of course, if you take your 20th/21st century optimizing mind and put it to the problem, yes it seems simple enough. But to someone of that time who did everything by tradition where new ideas are rare and few of them are actually beneficial, it is just simple to do everything just as it has always been done. We live in an age of invention and application, that has NOT always been the mindset of mankind. Tell a Hermetic Mage that he can use a Portal of Hermes to make himself rich and he will have to consider the ramifications, including the possibility of being the target of a Wizard's March.

Your point was that a Teleportation Circle could not be broken into or have its items stolen. I have shown that was false. It can be and yes the same party could steal an entire fleet of galleons. The first is like Sneakers, the second is cool and epic. There is also the possibility of spell research (at least in 3rd edition) or Ritual research (in 4th) that could duplicate that power, so it doesn't have to be psionic (and there are rules for converting psionics to spells in Urban Arcana) and spell research is a hallmark of wizards since 1st edition. And it wouldn't be a far stretch to develop an even better spell that would completely hijack the circle long enough to get rich (and a Disjunction on the original one would make it even better).

And, yes. Eberron makes sense, Ars Magica makes sense, Exalted makes sense, and even Dark Sun makes sense. But even then I have played a Magitech game where magic was a part of everyday life. Everyone could cast spells and everyone could use magic items. It wasn't standard D&D which doesn't make sense.

And keep it civil, don't use the word "stupid". I have three degrees in four sciences, one of which is Physics.