D&D General Lore Questions About Spelljamming Uses of Magic, Cosmology, Metaphysics

[Chaosmancer]

The epic spell Rain of Fire has a 2 mile radius

Fair, but I've never seen that spell and it was never mentioned. I can't even check to see how that spell is cast and if it has a cost that is high enough to make it not worthwhile. I was responding the Cloudkill's and Banshee Wail (which I can also not check, since I don't know where this spell is listed)

And those spells aren't 2 mile radi.

Okay, part of the problem here is that this is a Spelljammer discussion, which moves us to the common element of 1-3e, where SPelljammer exists. Eberron is also fundamentally and originally a 3e world.
Money and equipmentwise, eberron and the other worlds all use the same price lists, and the same wealth by level. It's all part of the rules. They have no advantage whatsoever in equipping anyone. Magewrights exist to make magitech to increase the standard of living, and have absolutely no macro influence on WBL and what can and cannot be given to your soldiers. If you are going to start claiming that Eberron can make things that Faerun cannot, the obverse also applies. Faerun has a far, far deeper magical heritage then Eberron can imagine, and again, Archcasters all over the damn place.

Look up the area of effects for Transmute Rock to Mud and Cloudkill in prior Editions. They are freaking massive, and Cloudkill moves at 30 there, not 10. If you are trying to hold a position, you are dead. It instantly kills anything of 4 HD or less, 5-6 HD saves at -4, 7-8 at normal, and 9+ are immune. So the archcaster can fill the area around him with death and be completely immune to it.
Oh, and then Widen it to double all the dimensions, too. And make it invisible, potentially.

a Lightning BOlt has a range of Long. It can rip a 10' line 1200 feet long through a formation.
Greater Lightning Storm can call down literally dozens of bolts over time onto a scattered formation, completely disrupting any unit cohesion.
Summon Monster VI+ can Summon tons of low level monsters right on top of you.
That save to avoid Wail of the Banshee is likely to be a 29. A soldier might have a 5% chance of saving against it.
A Meteor Swarm can take out half an acre, which means the core of your elite troops, or your command center, from 400 yards away or up in the air.
A Gate spell could bring in a Planetar, another 17th level caster.
Holy Word spells will instantly kill anyone of the wrong alignment and half the level or less nearby.

Those are just AoE's. An archcaster's ability to take out single, expensive targets is naturally much higher. One disintegrate spell can take out a Warforged Titan. A rain of fireballs and lightning bolts, or Just Call Lightning, from up in the sky will obliterate your artillery. Command of the weather will drown your troops in water and mud and leave them unable to go anywhere. Call in demons or the like to spread disease among your troops. Charm their commanders to give them the wrong orders.

I am not an Intellect 30 Archmage. Such beingsa re Not Dumb. Low level people have no way of dealing with everything an archcaster can bring to the table repeatedly.
The game is not the real world. In the real world, you shoot somebody, anybody, they can die instantly. In D&D, you can empty the entire clip into a high level character, and they'll just look at you funny. The combination of HP and AC is basically untouchable in the game we are talking about.

Now, if you want to go 5e... they reined in things a lot. But 5e is not the game of SPelljammer, nor the game Eberron was designed as. The bounded accuracy is not a thing. High level existences can kill armies on their own, bring down nations and kings.

It seems we have completely different premises.

I was working under the premise that if Eberron invaded a world, via some means, in 5e.

You are working under the premise of spelljamming in 3e or 2e. And, as you note, that immediately changes everything.

Wizards are immune to attacks, just period, of everyone below a threshold. At that point armies don't matter. Wizards can do anything. And at that point nothing matters. All of the stats of all of the spells are completely different, so the entire premise is shifted.

But, I will note something.

As I understand the game, the changes in the rules are canonical to the world. At least to Faerun, because of the Sundering.

That means, that while those Archcaster's may have been able to do those things a few decades ago, they no longer can. And since I do not know if they can see quantum probability, they might teleport into the middle of an army, expecting every attack from the soldiers to miss them, only to find that they don't. Smart does not mean you can't be prideful or make mistakes, it just means you make fewer of them.

Also, "Wealth by level" applies only to characters. If "Wealth by Level" applied to countries, then every Eberron nation not ruled by a being with multiple level 20 classes is broke as a joke. And magewrights existed for the purpose of giving magical gear to the soldiers, The Last War has most definetly been described to me as closer to a modern war than a medieval war. They used explosives after all. Ranged weaponry. War Magic.

So, I don't know why you would insist on declaring that "wealth by level and the phb mundane equipment chart" is all that Eberron would have access to. Eberron is wealthy, wealthy enough that they can afford to make magic items for the exclusive purpose of public health. No nation or city-state (which is another point of geopolitics) in the other countries can claim that. Despite their "deep magic" the common people see none of it. It is exclusively in the hands of the powerful. So, it is perfectly reasonable to assume the common soldier is given more magical equipment than the opposing forces, backed by the wealthy of Eberron.

 

[Coroc]

Fair, but I've never seen that spell and it was never mentioned. I can't even check to see how that spell is cast and if it has a cost that is high enough to make it not worthwhile. I was responding the Cloudkill's and Banshee Wail (which I can also not check, since I don't know where this spell is listed)

And those spells aren't 2 mile radi.





It seems we have completely different premises.

I was working under the premise that if Eberron invaded a world, via some means, in 5e.

You are working under the premise of spelljamming in 3e or 2e. And, as you note, that immediately changes everything.

Wizards are immune to attacks, just period, of everyone below a threshold. At that point armies don't matter. Wizards can do anything. And at that point nothing matters. All of the stats of all of the spells are completely different, so the entire premise is shifted.

But, I will note something.

As I understand the game, the changes in the rules are canonical to the world. At least to Faerun, because of the Sundering.

That means, that while those Archcaster's may have been able to do those things a few decades ago, they no longer can. And since I do not know if they can see quantum probability, they might teleport into the middle of an army, expecting every attack from the soldiers to miss them, only to find that they don't. Smart does not mean you can't be prideful or make mistakes, it just means you make fewer of them.

Also, "Wealth by level" applies only to characters. If "Wealth by Level" applied to countries, then every Eberron nation not ruled by a being with multiple level 20 classes is broke as a joke. And magewrights existed for the purpose of giving magical gear to the soldiers, The Last War has most definetly been described to me as closer to a modern war than a medieval war. They used explosives after all. Ranged weaponry. War Magic.

So, I don't know why you would insist on declaring that "wealth by level and the phb mundane equipment chart" is all that Eberron would have access to. Eberron is wealthy, wealthy enough that they can afford to make magic items for the exclusive purpose of public health. No nation or city-state (which is another point of geopolitics) in the other countries can claim that. Despite their "deep magic" the common people see none of it. It is exclusively in the hands of the powerful. So, it is perfectly reasonable to assume the common soldier is given more magical equipment than the opposing forces, backed by the wealthy of Eberron.

All fair, but according to official lore Eberron still reels for mthe last war, some of the most useful "weapons" warforged and warforged titans are not the same anymore and got "nerfed" in 5e as well, in addition it is forbidden to create new ones.
I always understood that while low level magic aka light spell or mending or whatever are much more easy available to the public, but in (especially in 5e) that does not so much apply for magic weapons and armor. A good guess is there might be similar amounts of them available to top notch elite troops than in FR or greyhawk.
But even if not, they do not make much difference in 5e. The 5e statblock for a mob (e.g. NPC soldier) would rather look melee attack +4 to hit 2d6 damage with the +4 to hit / 2d6 damage including the guy having 17 strength and a +1 weapon, whereas written up as a "player character" the guy would do 1d10+4 with a +6 (prof + str boon). Otoh the mob written up akin to a player character would eventually have less HP and better AC.
Concerning the lack of superskills by 5e wizards, take into account that they may well have artifacts enabling them to work nearly as efficient. These artifacts are more frequently available in FR or Oerth than in Eberron

 

[tetrasodium]

The eberron couldn't win an invasion because $statflationInsanity epic NPCs argument is silly & ignores a vey important detail. Eberron knows how to infiltrate & wage information warfare along with doing things like coopting many of those very same powerful individuals being thrown around with well paid & compensated positions doing much the same as they are currently doing & potentially doing it in a much nicer place where they have access to the benefits of modern society.

It's insane to think eberron would open a gate & send siege staff laden airships out to just start indiscriminately bombing cities instead of sending people like mark of shadow heirs/dark lanterns/etc to go around as spies & infiltrators that work to make offers to those who can be given offers & undermine or eliminate the crazy lunatics faerun & oerth somehow hadn't eliminated for the good of stable civilization.

Someone brought up how eberron has access to wide magic & large scale production capabilities spawning another argument about how the phb lists very specific stuff that applies to all settings. That tangent in favor of FR/Oerth's equal footing underscores, highlights, and backs up every argument about how obnoxiously FR centric the baseline assumptions in the phb are. There's no tables of wide magic or industrialized society equipment in the setting neutral core books... but the eberron specific Rising sure as heck has a cutout sidebar about how settings with guns give artificer firearm proficiency.

 

[Aelryinth]

Tetra, there's an entire organization in Faerun devoted to information warfare, dominated by Bards. It's called the Harpers. They've been doing information warfare since forever.
Divination magic is all on the side of Faerun. Eberron sends in those agents, they'll be sniffed out in no time by higher level natives, backtracked to where they came from, and steps taken. Faerun seems to get invaded by other planes every other week or something. Do you really think Eberron is doing something new?
Also, ifnormation warfare is how deities compete. There are a LOT of deities in Faerun, and just a few churches in Eberron. They will notice all this manipulation attempts very easily.

Wealth by level applies to NPC's and PC;s, and they even have different charts. Wealth of countries makes no difference, and Eberron being 'wealthy' is completely a misnomer... because that wealth in Faerun is in the hands of extremely high level individuals in the form of magic items and personal possessions, not public works. A 20+ level character can have higher personal wealth then the wealth limit of SHARN. Yes, that's right, an individual wealthier then the wealthiest city in Eberron. Now consider that at their height the Harpers had over a dozen 20+ characters who belonged to them.

Wealth simply is not an argument. Eberron has better low end magitech, I AGREE. But it's high end stuff is WAY below Faerun, and likely Oerth.

Rain of fire is out of the Epic Level handbook: Rain Of Fire :: d20srd.org

This Link: The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org
Gives you access to most of the 3.5 rules, although there are tons of expansions. If you can't find it, the FR Wiki has just about everything else, and people have made up tons of resources to find other things.

Eberron 3e is as valid as 5e, they are both canon... it depends what game you want to play. However, there's been nothing said of SPelljammer in 5E AFAIK, so you can't use that as a basis of comparison.

So, how did a Spelljammer thread evolve into a world of warfare comparison?
I'll point out that if we're talking wealth, Spelljammer trumps everyone. Every single bloody ship is powered by a Spelljamming helm worth a minimum of 100k before you outfit the ships, which are multiple times bigger than earthly vessels (including Eberron elemental airships), and the better helms are 200k or more.
That's before you outfit the party, and there are zillions of these ships out there.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Page 40 of Dragons of Argonesson states "A lowly clerk living in the Freeward
might well be a 7th-level expert/8th-level adept whose accumulated knowledge would make a Morgrave professor weep."

As for the dragons, they stay ahead because they also seem to often have many levels

Note that Argonessan is basically the epic-level area in Eberron. Yes it is full of dragons with high amounts of class levels who contend with deity and epic-level threats, but it is not typical of Eberron.

The basic Eberron army is only going to be about as effective as a Realms one: they have people of the same stats in, and the same equipment. Units of wandslingers and such are a fairly recent innovation.
Frankly I'm unsure of why Realms nations even have armies, given the number of archmages apparently ready to devastate them.

If a portal from the Realms to Eberron does get created and used as an invasion point rather than trade and diplomacy, it is likely to get sealed off quite fast. Eberron has a history of invasion by and sealing off planar invasions, and there would be a cooperative rush to close this one before the dragons took notice.
If Argonnessan decided to act, it is likely to shut down the portal and devastate the country on the Eberron side where it was located on a scale similar to Xen'drick or the Mournland.

 

[Bohandas]

So, how did a Spelljammer thread evolve into a world of warfare comparison?

I think there was another thread specifically about this and part of the conversation spilled over into here, but I could be misremembering

 

[tetrasodium]

Tetra, there's an entire organization in Faerun devoted to information warfare, dominated by Bards. It's called the Harpers. They've been doing information warfare since forever.
Divination magic is all on the side of Faerun. Eberron sends in those agents, they'll be sniffed out in no time by higher level natives, backtracked to where they came from, and steps taken. Faerun seems to get invaded by other planes every other week or something. Do you really think Eberron is doing something new?
Also, ifnormation warfare is how deities compete. There are a LOT of deities in Faerun, and just a few churches in Eberron. They will notice all this manipulation attempts very easily.

Wealth by level applies to NPC's and PC;s, and they even have different charts. Wealth of countries makes no difference, and Eberron being 'wealthy' is completely a misnomer... because that wealth in Faerun is in the hands of extremely high level individuals in the form of magic items and personal possessions, not public works. A 20+ level character can have higher personal wealth then the wealth limit of SHARN. Yes, that's right, an individual wealthier then the wealthiest city in Eberron. Now consider that at their height the Harpers had over a dozen 20+ characters who belonged to them.

Wealth simply is not an argument. Eberron has better low end magitech, I AGREE. But it's high end stuff is WAY below Faerun, and likely Oerth.

Rain of fire is out of the Epic Level handbook: Rain Of Fire :: d20srd.org

This Link: The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org
Gives you access to most of the 3.5 rules, although there are tons of expansions. If you can't find it, the FR Wiki has just about everything else, and people have made up tons of resources to find other things.

Eberron 3e is as valid as 5e, they are both canon... it depends what game you want to play. However, there's been nothing said of SPelljammer in 5E AFAIK, so you can't use that as a basis of comparison.

So, how did a Spelljammer thread evolve into a world of warfare comparison?
I'll point out that if we're talking wealth, Spelljammer trumps everyone. Every single bloody ship is powered by a Spelljamming helm worth a minimum of 100k before you outfit the ships, which are multiple times bigger than earthly vessels (including Eberron elemental airships), and the better helms are 200k or more.
That's before you outfit the party, and there are zillions of these ships out there.

Couple problems with that is the fact that despite existing harpers dont really do anything and it's easy to take over ownership of resource production/finished good production just by sharing enough tech to modernize them . A 30 or 40% stake in a business that now produces 50-100% more per GP cost with lower risk because someone associated with the new boss is managing security for the region instead of random necromancers kidnapping villagers or marauding bandits kicking over a slightly corrupt lord who keeps things running before walking away to leave a power vacuum of lawlessness. Keep in mind the harpers aren't stopping pcs from doing the same kinds of things the houses would be doing. Nobody in fr is on megacorp status with the kind of organized profit driven structure the houses have.... its absurd to suggest that the do nothing super friends of fr are equal in the same ways.



As to why spelljammer threads involve setting arguments so often, that is simple. Wotc likes to ignore the lore, baseline assumptions, planar/technology/societal differences of settings like Eberron and dark sun then take that willful blindness and base the "shared multiverse" on those aspects as they apply only to fr, grey hawk, and plan escape. Also I'm on mobile but iirc the setting war started because someone pointed out how planescape can't claim itself most advanced with everyone else looked down on as primitives if they are only using tech hundreds or thousands of years behind blue age athas, giants of xendriik, dhakaani empire, or any of the still active Eberron civilizations causing people to leap to the defense of fr and greyhawk.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Wealth by level applies to NPC's and PC;s, and they even have different charts. Wealth of countries makes no difference, and Eberron being 'wealthy' is completely a misnomer... because that wealth in Faerun is in the hands of extremely high level individuals in the form of magic items and personal possessions, not public works. A 20+ level character can have higher personal wealth then the wealth limit of SHARN. Yes, that's right, an individual wealthier then the wealthiest city in Eberron. Now consider that at their height the Harpers had over a dozen 20+ characters who belonged to them.

Wealth simply is not an argument. Eberron has better low end magitech, I AGREE. But it's high end stuff is WAY below Faerun, and likely Oerth.

Just going to pop this out and call this a bit ridiculous. Unless 3.5 is far different, which I'll check in a moment.

So, High Fantasy, 20th level in 5e. Maximum value of converted items. 84,000 gold. 3.5 has... well dang, 760,000 gold. Impressive.

Still not enough. And we can show it with just the very basics of economics.

So, rough estimates and measures of Aundair. A country I knew nothing about (I know nearly nothing about Eberron personally, so I've been wiking and mathing) but it is famous for agricultural exports, which means the basic maths I can provide will be good for estimates.

They are a large country by our standards (actually one of the smaller looking ones in Eberron). Cutting off the top portion where the forest is, they have approx 225,000 sq miles of arable land. That puts them in the top 40 real world countries (Right around Burma) and they have a population of about 2 million people according to the wiki.

So, they need to create enough food to feed 2 million people and export the majority of their food production. How many farms would they need? Well, Eberron is wide magic, and that cut off is around 3rd level spells, which means Plant Growth is a viable option. And, that can get us into "modern setting" levels by doubling food production. Just to give us the rough numbers accurately.

So, Afganistan has about 69 cities, let us cut this down to 40 cities in Aundair. Let us say as a farming nation, each city maintains a single square mile of farming land for wheat.

40 square miles x 640 acres per square mile x 37 bushels of wheat per square mile x 60 lbs of wheat per bushel = 56,832,000 lbs of wheat. In 5e, A single pound of wheat costs a single copper. Just wheat production here would then translate into 568,320 gold. Taxes estimated to be 10%, means that the government just made 56,832 gold.

That is 13% of the total money of the 20th level character. From a single product. The cheapest product I could find.

They also sell wine.

Let us go ahead and say that a second square mile is devoted to grapes in every city. An acre produces between 2 and 10 tons of grapes, let us go slightly high and average at 6 (we've got magic after all). That is about 360 bottles of wine.

40 sq miles x 640 acres per sq mile x 360 bottles = 9,216,000 bottles of wine. That much production, I'd say an average quality is fine, they are a famous exporter and the low end will average with the high end. So, let us say 5 gold per bottle.

46,080,000 gold, 10% taxes, 4,608,000 gold that the government just made.

That is 6 times the wealth of the 20th level adventurer.

And that is product #2, we haven't talked about taxing livestock, other food stuffs, wood (they have forests, they have a lumber industry) the value of any artworks they own, the scribes, the soldiers, the tailors, the alchemists, the magewrights, ect, ect, ect, ect, ect.

Sure, a single high level character could have a million gold at their beck and call. A million gold is a line edit in the budget to a country. The scale is simply incomparable.

And, while most of that is usually turned towards wages and products, leaving little in profit. War time is different, and the country will often focus a large portion of their budget into military endeavors, equipment, training, ect.

 

[tetrasodium]

So, rough estimates and measures of Aundair. A country I knew nothing about (I know nearly nothing about Eberron personally, so I've been wiking and mathing) but it is famous for agricultural exports, which means the basic maths I can provide will be good for estimates.

They are a large country by our standards (actually one of the smaller looking ones in Eberron). Cutting off the top portion where the forest is, they have approx 225,000 sq miles of arable land. That puts them in the top 40 real world countries (Right around Burma) and they have a population of about 2 million people according to the wiki.

not to debate with the rest of your post, but the population numbers for eberron should generally be considered highly suspect to the point that most of them result in population densities well south of the sahara desert. There are a lot of theories on why that range from screwup to losses during the last war being massively overemphasized without realizing that it would cause collapse of cities... But a big culprit is likely a result of wotc deciding to multiply the size of khorvaire by 10 during development & failing to do the same with population numbers. Sharn for example is about the size of manhattan but with towers that go up to a mile high, Rising lists it at half a million pop & when it could trivially have 8-12+ mil before getting into everyone living in the ruins the dhakaani undercity that might go just as deep if not deeper based on current day manhattan's above ground population/tower heights & the fact that sharn is not a ghost town.

If anything, it makes your point on how silly it is to compare the wealth of individuals to nation states and mega corps like the dragonmarked houseseven stronger

 

[Chaosmancer]

not to debate with the rest of your post, but the population numbers for eberron should generally be considered highly suspect to the point that most of them result in population densities well south of the sahara desert. There are a lot of theories on why that range from screwup to losses during the last war being massively overemphasized without realizing that it would cause collapse of cities... But a big culprit is likely a result of wotc deciding to multiply the size of khorvaire by 10 during development & failing to do the same with population numbers. Sharn for example is about the size of manhattan but with towers that go up to a mile high, Rising lists it at half a million pop & when it could trivially have 8-12+ mil before getting into everyone living in the ruins the dhakaani undercity that might go just as deep if not deeper based on current day manhattan's above ground population/tower heights & the fact that sharn is not a ghost town.

If anything, it makes your point on how silly it is to compare the wealth of individuals to nation states and mega corps like the dragonmarked houseseven stronger

I thought 2 mil seemed awfully low, but since it didn't change anything else I was working with I didn't go looking into it.