D&D General Is there a D&D setting that actually works how it would with access to D&D magic?

[Faolyn]

Respectfully, I genuinely don't think it is even remotely possible that a society would not develop those skills at all. Many modern Americans know how to manually start a fire and purify water, even though they've never had to use that knowledge in order to have warmth and clean water.

Yes, this is true. But many of the spells in question are divine. I can very easily see religions deciding that only things with truly divine origins can be used because anything else is impure.

But anyway. My original point wasn't that nobody would do these things for themselves, but that, if people relied on a few individuals to cast spells to purify food (not just water), cure strange diseases, create fire without fuel, and other things that can't be done easily or at all with the technology at hand, then civilizations would end up centered on those people; they would likely have a high-ranking position.

And the spell would tell you that. The person identifying disease knows what the disease is. Knowing the name of it isn't at all useful, nor does it make sense when you consider the origin of the spell. It has to have had a starting point, and that starting point really can't be names of illnesses. Nor does the spell say anything about language, or common nomenclature.

Also note that you learn what poisonous creature the poison is from, if any.

I just don't really see any way for the spell to function without giving the caster useful information about the type of disease.

Also, just being able to detect disease in a radius around you would reduce the spread of disease, as you could much more accurately quarantine the sick than we can today. And since it says you learn the kind of disease, you'd know if it's contagious or not, at the very least.

The spell says "For the duration, you can sense the presence and location of poisons, poisonous creatures, and diseases within 30 feet of you. You also identify the kind of poison, poisonous creature, or disease in each case."

It does not say that you learn the exact cause of the disease, meaning things like bacterial infection or mutated cell. You can decide it means that, sure, but I'm pretty sure it just means that you learn the people have koboldpox or were poisoned using giant spider venom or something similar; it might even detect lycanthropy, depending on if the DM decides that it's more like a disease than a curse. But I don't think it's going to go much deeper than that. Compare to detect magic, which says that you can spend an action to look more deeply at the magic to determine the school; or detect thoughts, which requires you to use an action to probe into the mind of the person whose thoughts you're detecting. Detect poison and disease merely says you detect the presence of such things and can identify what kind it is. But that's all it says. Anything else should require a Medicine roll, at least.

But yes, it will very much help to constrain diseases by making it easy to quarantine the infected.

 

[Voadam]

According to the Forgotten realms campaign setting, around 1 person in every hundred has Sorcerer/ Wizard abilities (i.e. levels). In places like Thay, and Halruaa and Cormanthor that number is 10 times higher.

Do you have a citation for that?

I don't remember any reference to such numbers and 10% of the population seems very high for Thay and Halruaa.

You're imagining some kind of 'Spellcasters are rare/ burn the witch' setting, but none of the conventional DnD settings are presented like this. Even a village of 100 or so has a wizard or sorcerer or two, a druid and a few clerics. Every town of 1000 or so has an archmage, and several lower level spellcasters, and cities of 10,000 or more have literally several archmages, dozens of powerful clerics to several Gods (and their clerical followers), druids, bards and you name it.

Same here, those numbers seem off, particularly the archmage in every village of 1000.

For instance here is some information on default numbers from the 3.0 DMG pages 137 to 140.

Which would place the small town of 1,000 with expected highest level wizards and sorcerers of 1d4 levels.

Other books will of course have different specific numbers.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you have a citation for that?

I don't remember any reference to such numbers and 10% of the population seems very high for Thay and Halruaa.

From The Shining South page 129.

"Most folk who have never been to Halruaa hold a couple of mistaken assumptions. The first is that all Halruaan's are wizards. Though far from true, this assumption has doubtless been fostered in the minds of foreigners by the few Halruaans with whom they have had contact. In fact, only about one-third of all Halruaan's have the gift of wizardry; the other two thirds just act as though they do."

I don't know what they Thay numbers are, but they would be lower than Halruaa for sure.

 

[Voadam]

Seriously, find me a published village or town in any official setting, and there will be several spellcasters in it.

OK, challenge accepted.

Village of Winterhaven in the free H1 Keep on the Shadowfell for 4e detailed starting on page 9.

Population 977.

Ruled by a level 3 warlord.

Valthrun the Prescient, a sage and scholar who can sell a few select 1st and 2nd level rituals to the party, not stated whether he is a spellcaster himself.

Sister Linora runs the village temple, explicitly not a cleric, a non-heroic priest.

 

[Voadam]

From The Shining South page 129.

Thanks.

I recently got FR16 The Shining South but it is a 96 page book so I am guessing that is the 3rd edition one.

 

[Maxperson]

Thanks.

I recently got FR16 The Shining South but it is a 96 page book so I am guessing that is the 3rd edition one.

Yeah. And I have no idea which supplement or edition I read it in, but the vast majority of Halruaan's with wizard abilities know cantrips or maybe 1st level spells. Basically a huge portion of the population has the gift, but relatively few(but still considerably more than other countries) go into magic seriously and advance to mid or high levels.

 

[Voadam]

Yeah. And I have no idea which supplement or edition I read it in, but the vast majority of Halruaan's with wizard abilities know cantrips or maybe 1st level spells. Basically a huge portion of the population has the gift, but relatively few(but still considerably more than other countries) go into magic seriously and advance to mid or high levels.

Further down on page 129 of the 3e Shining South:

"Of the third of the population with magical skill, approximately two-thirds have never been able to get beyond a simple trick or two (as noted in the description of the Magical Training feat; see page 36 of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting). The rest—a little more than 10 percent of the total population—actually understand the intricacies of casting spells."

The Magical Training feat is a regional feat for Halruaa with prerequisites of int 10+, it gives the ability to cast a few arcane cantrips.

Magical Training [General]
You come from Halruaa, a half-legendary land where basic magic is taught to all with the aptitude for it. Every crafter and laborer, it seems, knows a cantrip or two to ease her work.
Prerequisite: Intelligence 10+.
Region: Halruaa.
Benefit: You may cast the 0-level arcane spells dancing lights, daze, and mage hand once per day each. You have an arcane spell failure chance if you wear armor. You are treated as a wizard of your arcane spellcaster level (minimum 1st level) for determining the range at which these spells can be cast.
Special: You may only take this feat as a 1st-level character.

 

[Faolyn]

Ed Greenwood did a twitter thread on it. Someone who is better at math than I can actually crunch the numbers, if they like.

 

[James Gasik]

Item creation costs xp in 3.5 yes. It wasn't a lot of it, and the xp system was designed so that if you were lower level than the rest of your party, you earned more xp as a result. So you were never that far behind. As for how NPC's earn xp...this is a dirty secret the game has never, to my knowledge addressed. How did Farmer Bob become a 7th level Commoner? How did the master weaponsmith become a 11th level Expert? How did they progress so far without managing to upgrade to a "real" class? NPC's are whatever level the DM decides they have to be, and xp is never in the equation.

People moan about how Pathfinder got rid of the xp cost, but it really wasn't that big of a limiting factor. Unfortunately, neither is gold, since making an item costs you half it's price. Then you can sell it for double. So let's say you're a 9th level Wizard and you find a cheap, useful magic item- the Handy Haversack. The ability to carry more stuff without dealing with messy logistics and packing skills! This could revolutionize labor and trade! It costs me 1000 gp to make. Market price is 2000. But hey, I could actually lower the cost if I want to, as long as I'm making a profit.

But at full price, I make one, and sell it for enough to make 2. As long as I can find buyers, I can make these things forever (making sure to skim some money off the top for my own needs). If demand goes up, I can raise my prices to whatever the market will bear!

The only real cost for making magic items is the startup money, and TIME. Which NPC's have tons of, because they don't have to adventure- only player characters are forced to risk their lives to gain power.

 

[Vaalingrade]

OK, challenge accepted.

Village of Winterhaven in the free H1 Keep on the Shadowfell for 4e detailed starting on page 9.

Population 977.

Ruled by a level 3 warlord.

Valthrun the Prescient, a sage and scholar who can sell a few select 1st and 2nd level rituals to the party, not stated whether he is a spellcaster himself.

Sister Linora runs the village temple, explicitly not a cleric, a non-heroic priest.

ah-h!

But according to one of the dumbest arguments ever, everyone in 4e is a caster because their powers share discrete structures.

Game. Set. Match.