Magic for the Masses, An Age of Industrial Enlightenment

[RUMBLETiGER]

As I look at and play within the D&D universe, I can't help but think in a world with this kind of magic and the manufacture of magical items, it would be inevitable that a feudal-style civilization filled mostly with unskilled or single skilled commoners would quickly cease to be and be replaced by some form of Industrial Revolution and Age of Enlightenment. Perhaps it's only the constant danger and conflicts with Monsters of all kinds that holds the humanoids back, I don't know. Perhaps the Dwarves and Elves already have developed some measure of this idea, but please come along with me on a journey of the mind, and tell me if this makes sense.

I start off by imagining a conversation between some mix of a Wizard, a Factotum, an Artificer, an Archivist, a Bard and a Cleric of Boccob. Having adventured, learned, traveled continents and Planes of existence, and even saved the Multiverse a time or two, They'd consider how the skills and abilities they possess could benefit humanity at large. Spells such as Prestidigitation, Mending & Unseen Servant could eliminate much of the Commoner's work and lifestyle.

Spells like Lesser Vigor, Remove Disease &Ray of Resurgence could replace the medical profession for day to day problems and pains.

Create Food and Water would eliminate famine and poverty.

Education would be supported by Amanuensis & Scholar’s Touch.

Manufacturing would be aided by Loresong, Magecraft & Wieldskill.

Entertainment used Ghost Sound, Silent Image & Summon Instrument.

Food preservation and preparation used Heat Metal, Chill Metal, Create Water, Groundsmoke, Slow Burn & Purify Food and Drink.

Other miscellaneous areas of life benefited from Candlelight, Floating Disk, Healer’s Vision, Instant Search, Jump, Light, Mage Hand, Magic Mouth, Message, Mount & Spontaneous Search
Glowing Orbs and Continual Flame stones were produced by the Artificer and Wizard to illuminate the households and village.

...and those are almost all level 0 or 1 spells.

Schools could be started to train Experts in UMD for level 0 & 1 wands. At level 1, Human Experts with 4 ranks + Skill Focus + Magical Aptitude + a base CHA of 16 would provide a +12 bonus to the UMD skill. Give graduates from the program Cloaks of Charisma (+2), assume a few levels of Expert to graduate and now you've got a workforce of specialized, educated professionals who can utilize Eternal Wands to aid the community.

Once the concept of utilizing magic for everyday use caught on, people could be trained in the magical arts themselves. Even 11 or 12 in the appropriate mental stat grants access to up to level 2 spells, which most of the non-combat utility spells come from.

I went thru the Magic Item Compendium and made a list of Magical Items that cost 3000gp or less that higher level professionals could manufacture. These are all items that have use out of combat, can be used by a commoner and could have application in daily life. Consider the following list, or just blur your eyes and pass it over, realizing there are a lot of utility items:

Goodberry Bracelet, Pearl of Speech, Third Eye Improvisation, Mask of Sweet Air, Crystal Mask of Knowledge, Crystal Mask of Languages, Eyes of the Eagle, Spellsight Spectacles, Boots of Landing, Anklet of Translocation, Dimension Stride Boots, Boots of Elvenkind, Shapesand, Brute Gauntlets, Lightning Gauntlets, Gauntlets of Extended Range, Gloves of Object Reading, Watch Lamp, Hat of Disguise, Rings of Communication, Ring of Floating, Ring of Feather Falling, Ring of Climbing, Ring of Jumping, Ring of Sustenance, Ring of Swimming, Cloak of Weaponry, Cloak of Elvenkind, Vanisher Cloak, Safewing Emblem, Amulet of Aquatic Salvation, Symbol of Transfiguration, Hand of the Mage, Contact Medallion, Shiftweave, Healing Belt, Silkslick Belt, Belt of Growth, Blessed Bandage, Skill Shard, Universal Solvent, Daylight Pellet, Unguent of Timelessness, Everfull Bug, Greater Skill Shard, Dust of Tracelessness, Quall’s Feather Token-Bird, Everlasting Rations, Quall’s Feather Token-Tree, Talisman of the Disk, Scrying Beacon, Everlasting Feedbag, Rope of Stone, Dust of Dryness, Bag of Tricks-Grey, Replenishing Skin, Rod of Sliding, Sending Stones, Spool of Endless Rope, Tome of Worldly Memory, Pipes of Sounding, Field Provisions Box, Handy Haversack, Orb of Environmental Adaptation, Healing Salve, Sovereign Glue, Bag of Holding I, Crystal Anchor of Alertness, Stone of Alarm, Bag of Tricks-Rust, Horseshoes of Speed, Rope of Climbing.

Most of the above list are repeat use items. Any cluster of them would alter life forever for a village. By supplementing the majority of the Commoner's work day with magically assisted effort, people would be freed up to pursue more educational and leisurely pursuits.

...And so, is this line of thinking reasonable? Would a handful of high level adventurers, retiring with their wealth and knowledge and seeking to educate the masses, be able to spark a cultural and economic revolution?

 

[S'mon]

I tend to think a world with 3e magic would most likely resemble Way of the Exploding Fist, or the Wilderlands of High Fantasy - pretty much a wasteland, with superhuman magic-wielders dominating the scattered remnants of humanity.

But a magitech utopia is also possible, given some different assumptions about human(ish) nature.

 

[Greenfield]

In many ways the problem is scale. Create Food and Drinkis a neat spell, but it isn't a 1st level one and the amount of food you can produce is limited. As in, it would take a dozen solid leveled casters to even begin to feed a small village. Feeding a city? Not really an option, at least not with that spell. A fifth level Cleric could cast that spell once per day, maybe twice.

That's 15 people per casting.

According to the World Builder's Guide, the distribution of casters will never be enough. The percentage of 5th level or higher level casters just isn't there, no matter how large or small a population center you have. We considered this issue in planning my group's current campaign, where widespread crop failures are part of the ongoing plot line.

To my mind, mass production in general would be kind of hard to see developing, as would an "Age of Enlightenment". The Scientific Method depends on reproducibility: If I mix compound A and compound B in a 3 to 17 ratio I should get the same result every time, and it shouldn't matter if I'm the one doing it or if it's someone else. But the Alchemy rules of D&D make it clear that it does make a difference. If I'm a spell caster and the other guy isn't, mine will work and his won't.

The fact that reproducibility is not consistent may well keep people from developing the scientific method itself. When D&D magic works, reproducibility isn't, well, reproducible.

And because of the EXP cost of creating magic items there isn't a way to run an assembly line for those, unless that line happens to include human sacrifice to power the enchantments.

So there may be a Gnomish renaissance, when steampunk comes into its own, but magic will always be rare and special. In fact, as an Industrial age draws the better minds to engineering, there will end up being a smaller percentage of people with "the right stuff" to be spell casters. You would essentially be creating a new subdivision of "spell casters", the Technomancers. Remember that World Builder's Guide (or even just the DMG) distribution of higher leveled people in a population center doesn't say what class, profession or trade they'll be. It just tells you how many of level X there will be in a city with a population of Y. And if more of them study physics, fewer will be studying metaphysics.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

There are select items that would be easy to produce and would be usable forever.

Take the Field Provisions Box, Magic Item Compendium p. 160. Produces a full day's food for 15 people or 5 horses. It would cost 1000gp to create, 40xp from one person, two days of time spent crafting and requires one casting of Create Food and Water. This would feed an extended family for a lifetime. This would be an heirloom to pass onto the grandchildren, a few of these would sustain a village throughout the winter or times of drought. This eliminates the need for farming, the need for hunting, the need for cooking, preserving food, preparing food, risking diseases from poorly handled food. This item alone would free up hours a day for a family and eliminate the need for any level of farming.

How about a family owning a Heward's Fortifying Bedroll? Get a full night's sleep in 2 hours. Yes, you can only have the effect work every 48 hours. This means, every other night, you're adding 6 hours of productivity to your day.

Don't get me started on what happens if just one person uses Fabricate for a community a day.

Or spells set to auto-resetting traps, which we've discussed before.

Production of items would not need to be "1 for each person", just a handful of these items, 1 per family, would alter the way life works.

What I'm doing is dissagreeing with the World Builder's Guide in terms of distribution of levels and classes. I think it would be possible to have the majority of a population at least be level 1 casters, and there can be a tradition that when you achieve Caster level 3, you develop the ability to Craft Wondrous Items, and as a rite of passage, you make one. Just one magic item that would serve to benefit the community. If 1/10th of the population each made one magical item that could be used at least once a day, for the rest of time, civilization would become radically different.

If you feed the people, protect them from danger and give them ways to accomplish the same tasks faster (much the way our American culture works today) then people use the extra time and the safer feeling to pursue things like education or entertainment. It allows minds freed up from needing to focus on surviving and opens opportunities for innovation.

 

[Herobizkit]

I'm with [MENTION=6674868]RUMBLETiGER[/MENTION].

In theory, every normal person on a D&D planet has the potential to learn simple Cantrips with an average Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma of 10. Of course, D&D being the way it is, only NPC Adepts could cast said cantrips...

And yes, while it is true that many of the higher-level casters will be rarer, dedicated "Kitchen Witches" and "Hearth Mages" would be treasured members of the community, or possibly reviled for their supernatural gifts (ie. The Xavier/Magneto argument).

Even right now, in real life, if I could buy a brooch or pin that kept insects away from me all the time, forever... it would seem like an insignificant magic item (use bug spray, derp) but in the right places (like, say, staving off malaria-carrying mosquitoes) such a trinket could change the face of a civilization.

 

[Loonook]

The problem with including the FPB is that, well, it goes against SRD items that are similar. While there are tricks to make this work, we must also take into account the overall cost for purchasing the FPB.

2000 GP right? If we're working with a family of laborers in normal proportions of the period (around 2 working 'adults' per 3 children, children @ 1/2 rations) you have an optimum possible payment of 15 GP if all individuals are considered unpaid labor. If we pay forward the 1 SP/"adult"/day to pay off the item would be paid off in 11 years and a 10 days. This is of course not figuring in any interest (at 3% the item would cost 7.3 GP/month over 14 years totaling to 1226.4 GP).

This would be a great tool in the long, long run, but we're just talking about basic food needs. If we also had payments for use of water in areas where potable water is difficult to get a hold of (and thus Decanters of Endless Water) we are looking at more costs which, while negligible to the individual over the short term could be expensive to maintain for a noble at his household without reservoirs. You must also include the costs of spells, wands, etc. which are extremely expensive in the peasant world over time. Your calculations for a 16 Cha. NPC also doesn't take into account the problems of the Array and how common such a high Cha. would be without additional costs.

Check out my Manor Generator in my thread on Economy in Tabletop Games, look into the possibilities, and see what you can go with from there.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[MDK]

I've always kept the spell Continual Light in my campaigns, simply because I enjoyed the notion of the PCs paying the farmer for a night's lodging by casting CL in a pebble and provide the farm with permanent light.
My campaign world HAS been transformed significantly due to such magic. Anankay, the oldest city in the world, and the surrounding areas have a level of civilisation akin to 18ht and 19th century just before the industrial revolution. As you travel away from this area, civilisation slowly drops to the more mideaval setting typical of D&D and still further into the stone age and the untouched wilderness. Obviously, civilisation will slowly spread, but given that Riann is truly humongous (and flat) it will be a long while yet before the far corners of the world are even discovered, never mind explored and inhabited.
But yes, in civilised lands magic is readily available and goes a long way to making life better for everyone.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

The problem with including the FPB is that, well, it goes against SRD items that are similar. While there are tricks to make this work, we must also take into account the overall cost for purchasing the FPB.

2000 GP right? If we're working with a family of laborers in normal proportions of the period (around 2 working 'adults' per 3 children, children @ 1/2 rations) you have an optimum possible payment of 15 GP if all individuals are considered unpaid labor. If we pay forward the 1 SP/"adult"/day to pay off the item would be paid off in 11 years and a 10 days. This is of course not figuring in any interest (at 3% the item would cost 7.3 GP/month over 14 years totaling to 1226.4 GP).

I understand this, assuming the wages for an average, unskilled/limited skilled commoner family.

What I propose is an economic shift that begins with the financial investment of very wealthy retired adventurers. Consider the following steps:

The Wizard, Bard, Artificer, Archivist, Factotum and Cleric are all level 15 adventurers when they retire. Their Wealth-by-level according to the DMG should be 200,000gp, and lets assume that they have 10% of this liquid for investing. This is a financial investment, and so the money would not need to come from the commoner families initially.

So, we've got 6 adventurers having pooled together 120,000gp. They buy an old Manor house, and the crafters in the group get to work producing a handful of level 0~1 Eternal wands of Prestidigitation, Unseen Servant, Mending, Create Water, etc. Also, a Field Provisions Box. They begin to advertize their products to nearby villages (Think door to door vacuum salesmen) from the angle of time saving devices. They offer to supply these items, if qualifying individuals are willing to go through a training program on how to use them. Clerics of Boccob are supposed to be known for assessing those with magical talent and putting them to education, so figure this method has already been worked out.

They take a handful of bright, young, promising individuals and train them to either be Experts in UMD, or actual casters. As fart of the education agreement, these trained individuals return to their villages and use their newfound skills for the benefit of the communities. The heroes oversee this service. Time passes.

Quality of life improves. Every so often, the heroes produce another magical device (costing them 3000gp or less) that they offer to the outlying villages. It becomes a requirement of their students that every caster learn to manufacture a magic item (Take Craft Wondrous Item feat at 3rd level) when they are able, and must manufacture one repeat-use magic item for the benefit of the community.

Over time the school grows a village as students flock in, having heard about this education. Artificers, professionally trained, are employed from a school-owned company. Now this region, which has been growing in stability, possesses an export product- Magic items and magical services. The retired heroes have become Lords of their land, using their public influence, wealth and power from being high leveled adventurers to maintain a kingdom founded upon magical education and life-improving products. A hospital based off a few healing spell wands and divine casters, numerous businesses and trade, a factory operating off of use of the Fabricate spell... neighboring kingdoms cannot compete.

Because the education is public, other nations learn. The pattern is replicated. The world is changed.

...is this line of thinking practical and possible, or am I missing something?

 

[MDK]

Every so often, the heroes produce another magical device (costing them 3000gp or less) that they offer to the outlying villages. It becomes a requirement of their students that every caster learn to manufacture a magic item (Take Craft Wondrous Item feat at 3rd level) when they are able, and must manufacture one repeat-use magic item for the benefit of the community.

Where's he getting the money from to craft said item? A 3000gp item costs 1500 to craft. I can see part of that money going into small stuff like getting firewood to keep your cauldrom boiling, and that part could be covered by favors owed the student (for casting, say, a Continual Flame), but most of that 1500 will actually have to be paid. How does he afford that?

Edit: never mind the Continal Flame it costs 50gp worth of powdered ruby; assume a different usefull spell with no significant gp cost.

 

[nijineko]

a magi-tech society is completely doable even if you limit it to 1st and 2nd level casters. genetic selection will take care of the rest. with the xp transfer rules and just one mid level caster, it can be jump-started. solving social difficulties, puzzles, training, heck - even just surviving a famine or storm or bandit raid counts as xp, not just combat with monsters or traps in a dungeon. that's why most people should be a minimum of level 3 by the time they die (more if magical access is available - just think of what gentle repose can do for food preservation), even commoners. the whole level-one-for-life concept is completely bogus, and therefore most demographic distributions presented for d&d are completely off.

i mean, think about it. an ecl 1 encounter for a first level character is 300 xp. that's assuming 4 characters splitting it. so 75 xp, potentially more if you don't have to split it. but if you have an encounter with the baron's men, present a good argument as to why your town doesn't have the taxes yet, and get beaten for your trouble... that's at least an ecl 1. sneaking onto selfsame baron's land and hunting in his private forest, sneaking out, and selling the skin at the market to make those taxes, dodging a patrol of the baron's men that almost finds you is another ecl 1, maybe even 2. and the peasant wouldn't have to split that xp - unless you subscribe to the 1/4th rule regardless of if you have partners or not. and that bad storm that ruined a chunk of the crops in the first place but has now survived is another ecl 1 or 2 depending on how rough the storm made it. but now he recognizes the signs of a big impending blow out next time it happens - ie: peasant learned, grew, and gained xp.

by the time one year has passed, said peasant will likely have had 4 to 5 events significant enough to be EL1 occur. even if you assume only 4 big enough events over the space of a year, that's somewhere between 300 and 1200 xp in one year, depending on if and/or how you split the award. say the peasant lives 40 years, and taking off for childhood, that's between 25 and 30 years of potential xp gain. let's say just 25 years for argument's sake. and only 4 events per year. assuming bare minimum xp gain, that calculates to 7500 xp or level 3.

just the sheer number of skills that a peasant will know should clearly dictate that they can't be level one. they are going to have some ranks in profession or craft, some in handle animal, use rope, quite a few in survival, some in move silent, some in hide, some in bluff, probably one in perform: instrument, some in appraise, and a lot in know: local. peasant kids are probably level one, but adults are likely to be levels 3-5.

extending this, even if you only have adepts, it will eventually provide the foundation of a decent tech base, so long as they don't all get wiped out in a war or disaster or something. then genetics and training will eventually expand the magic capable population base.