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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8554471" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Good on ya for stating your assumptions and trying to get the thread back to the intended focus. I'm afraid the board is liable to continue refusing the premise of your question, but that's how it goes.If Pathfinder is where you get your starting assumptions, then I would again recommend you read the <a href="https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?222007-The-Definitive-Guide-to-the-Tippyverse-By-Emperor-Tippy" target="_blank">Tippyverse</a> post. It's not perfect, but it does at least do what you are asking. Also, as [USER=67]@Rune[/USER] mentions, the <a href="https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html" target="_blank">Order of the Stick webcomic</a> uses a setting that takes literally a bunch of the rules quirks of 3e D&D (often as parody).While reading your post, I had a curious recollection of season 3 of The Wire, where a neighborhood gets littered with partially used burner phones that people pick up, use, and then drop on the ground. An erstwhile D&D-land crime lord could, perhaps, do the same with wands. But, of course, lots of D&D magic items are permanent. Imagine picking up a 200 year old continual flame pebble from the street, which has basically no value, using it to find your way home from the bar, and then tossing it the gutter. Things that are durable pile up like that--even if an object was created to be grand and high status, it's liable to be sold as a cheap hand-me-down decades or centuries later.There was a pattern like this in the price of swords in the middle ages. They start out expensive but gradually become cheap and common. Here's a link about that from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy1fcRG0A3g" target="_blank">scholagladiatoria </a>(which is a spectacular resource if you want to know things about medieval kit--and not just the D&Disms about medieval kit)Yes, absolutely! And, fortunately [USER=1356]@FoxWander[/USER] has helpfully provided some, so we can go from there.I disagree. To my thinking, both strategies are reasonable.The fun of starting from assumptions and trying to play them out is that it often leads to unexpected places. Trying to be "realistic" can get you to a setting that is more creative and strange than what you would have invented yourself. Even if it isn't really possible to a fully worked out fantasy world, the constraints are good for creativity.I'm glad someone brought this up. Dune is a very good example of technological stasis done right.Herbert posits a technobabble law, the <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Holtzman_Effect" target="_blank">Holtzman Effect</a>, and a religious taboo against AI, the <a href="https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad" target="_blank">Butlerian Jihad</a>, that do a lot to explain the stasis of Dune tech and society. The tech creates a feudal social system and the feudal social system maintains the tech. You can listen to an actual historian nerd out about it at length <a href="https://boiledleatheraudiohour.tumblr.com/post/668309518485176320/blah-142-the-fremen-mirage-the-myth-of-the" target="_blank">in this podcast</a>.</blockquote>

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