Magic for the Masses, An Age of Industrial Enlightenment

[Greenfield]

There are rules for RP experience, for handling a challenging encounter that isn't combat, so level advancement for commoners isn't an issue. it happens, and the idea that the whole world is 1st level is bogus.

But then, neither the DMG nor WBG ever say that the world is all 1st level. They say that the majority are st level, and that few will ever go higher than third in their lifetimes.

The NPC spell caster class is the Adept, and it incorporates aspects of both Divine and Arcane casting. It's a Wisdom based caster and has to wait until 4th level to get a shot at 2nd level spells. At that level they get 0, which means that they can have one if they have a Wisdom bonus big enough to give them a bonus 2nd level spell.

That being said, the average person isn't studying to be an Adept. They're studying their family trade, the one that will let them fill their required niche in the world and survive. They'd need an above average Wisdom score to be able to actually do anything and the average person, by definition, doesn't have an above average Wisdom.

Supply and Demand comes into play: If every one is an Adept, or even a Cleric or Wizard, what does the job pay? On the other hand, the person who can provide food that goes beyond "nutritious if bland" will probably make a good living. Remember that the Create Food and Water spell produces what is essentially a turkey sandwich, no tomatoes and no mustard. (It used to produce gruel, but got upgraded in 3.5 and Pathfinder.) The Provisions Chest, being based on the same, will produce similarly bland food.

Now what limits population growth? Generally, predators and the food supply. Without significant predators to trim the population, the only limit will be food. It's nature at work, simple biology, that the population will grow to the limit of the food supply, and beyond.

In your techno-magical utopia, where everyone gets magical medical care and plagues and diseases get stomped out before they can spread, well... Do you remember that episode of Star Trek, TOS, where Kirk and company ended up dealing with a world that had exactly that problem? Replicators provided unlimited food, the atmosphere blocked diseases, and the entire planet looked like the mob outside a shopping mall on Black Friday, waiting for it to open.

That's more or less what you're talking about.

So yes, you can throw out the population guidelines in any of the books. You can throw out any rules you want. You can remake the game world to be as exciting and devoid of challenge as a traffic jam.

The problem is that most of us already live in that world. We play the games to escape it.

 

[Loonook]

120,000 will get you a Cheap Keep and Basic Residential Facilities for 60 individuals with 24k to spare. That is around the price of 56 0th level Wands, or 29 1st level EWs. Now you will have to pay for student travel (or let them come find you, venturing on the road as 0th/1st level apprentices-to-be). Your magic school will also have to pay for all sorts of hirelings for the upkeep, and deal with the community at large...

120,000 GP sounds like a lot of cash, until you have to spend it on building strongholds.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't think this would work, at least within core rules. The economic system is messed up.

Think about what a potion of cure light wounds would be worth to a peasant. A lot. You'd want it, if only as insurance, but it costs 50 gp, more money than you'll see in your life.

The Industrial Revolution, Green Revolution and other such changes occurred because these advances became cheap.

Eberron solved this problem (although in a nebulous way) by having lots of outside-the-rules items (such as warforged creation forges) that are incredibly cheap to operate, but could only be used by dragonmarked people.

House Ghallandra probably has baskets of cheap food they can make ... but they also have a monopoly on it. Only halflings with the appropriate mark could operate such an item, and if you're not authorized (say, cast out of the house) you'd probably get assassinated.

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.

I'm picturing Luddite riots Also, nobles might think servants make a better status symbol than spells (plus you need to be able to trust a caster to keep casting that spell for you if you're not a caster yourself). So I think a party hosted by unseen servants would either be a wizard thing or a once-in-a-year festival for nobles.

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

They're certainly more reliable, but you can't afford them.

Create Food and Water would eliminate famine and poverty.

See above.

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

I'm not familiar with those spells. (I know the 4e ritual for the first though.)

Manufacturing would be aided by Loresong, Magecraft & Wieldskill.

I think it'd be cheaper in the long run to just train people.

Entertainment used Ghost Sound, Silent Image & Summon Instrument.

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.

UMD DCs are high, so you need skilled experts. Furthermore, those wands cost a lot and so do cloaks of Charisma.

...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?

I think only locally, at high cost, and they'd have to deal with the Luddites. (I think even a high-level druid would have trouble operating a commune...)

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.

In a few generations, any family that hasn't had bad luck would quickly outgrow that food source. In fact, without birth control, said family would grow faster!

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

They get killed by Luddites. Sounds like a fun campaign, actually. People clinging to the past, and throwing rocks.

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.

I think only noble families could actually take advantage of these benefits. I doubt a large family of 100 peasants could afford the 1/day feed someone item.

A noble family might be able to, though. (I think we can dispense with WBL for noble NPCs, as long as that money isn't being spent on combat gear. Give the +5 sword to your best bodyguard.) They wouldn't live off of it (the food would be bland), but it'd be handy in an emergency. Note that it doesn't even provide enough food to feed your troops or even your bodyguard unit of maybe 12 guys.

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

I think this is where I have to clearly disagree with you. I wouldn't want to play in such a world. I don't think having a high starting Int is enough to be a wizard. I think most people just wouldn't have the talent, even if they're smart. Talent isn't in the rules, admittedly, but you can always assume the PCs have a lot more potential talent than NPCs.

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.

I just don't think you could do it cheaply and economically. But maybe it's your examples. I'm picturing an item that casts Plant Growth once per year, being that village's special item, and being really handy. (Until D&D vikings come and steal it!)

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.

Here's where it breaks down. These students came out of poverty. How are they able to craft these items? A 1st-level wand costs 750 gp, so 375 gp of raw material plus XP (we'll assume there's a way around that). Of course, these adventurers could provide the raw materials, but they'll run out eventually (unless they're only supplying a small area). I don't think these new students are going to be able to keep doing this while dealing with customers who can't afford it. Of course, you could end up with each village having one item.

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

On a related note, are you familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs? At the bottom are the most important things, namely staying alive. Food and water would come long before unseen servants. If a peasant had to choose between an item that creates food and something that saves him a bit of work, he'll choose the former. The latter is just a luxury.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

A few additional and clarifying thoughts:

-My thinking assumes the use of endless use magical items. Not 50 charge wands, but useable twice a day eternal wands, that will work just as well two hundred years from now as they would today. A slow buildup of items like these diffusing through a community adds up.

-Level 1 casters, even coming from poverty, can make their money by providing services to their community and the outlying neighborhoods. The requirement that a level 3 caster make an item that costs him 1,500gp, that's very much within the expectations of what a level 3 character can afford according to the wealth by level table since a level 3 character is expected to have 2,700gp by level 3. It's a significant chunk, but if it's a mandatory expectation as a result of your education tuition and a cultural norm, it could happen.

-It has occurred to me in my earlier scenario that I was thinking too much like a freedom-wielding American. I proposed that these adventurers would approach the common folk and they would appeal to the everyday man, who could then choose a lifestyle change. A feudal-style community wouldn't have that option, so perhaps the first step would be to appeal to a local Lord to become a benefactor, convince him to mandate his best and brightest peasants participate in said education, and then the rest of the process would occur from there. I dunno.

I'm not saying I'd want to play D&D in such a world. I agree with @Greenfield that this starts to look to much like the world we live in, and there's less appeal. I'm not saying it is a good idea. I'm not saying it would be a playable idea. What I am saying in given what I know about Humans, I'd expect such a process to become inevitable in a magic-infused world. Given the choice between spending a lifetime toiling to farm the land to feed your family, or spending a few years to manufacture one item that would feed all future generations, I think the majority of people would choose the latter, for a wide variety of selfish or selfless reasons.

Now, I'd expect horrible, terrible repercussions within the next few generations of this progress. As POWER becomes more commonly available, the measures needed to contain such power would need to increase, and those with newly acquired freedom that comes from Power would buck against such restraints. @S'mon 's description of a wasteland, resulting in the abuse of too much power and the wars that might result, also appear as one logical conclusion of such a development.

A land that lived thru the midst of this chaos, or the after effects of such chaos, might make for a good campaign. I could see the last remaining Hero, kept alive through powerful devices, saying something like "We wanted to improve Humanity. We were so, so wrong..." and a new wave of PC heroes setting out to wipe such knowledge from the face of the earth, for people's own good. Sooner or later greed and selfishness would kick in before utopia could be achieved.

Anywho, thanks all for riding along my thought train. I just have a hard time imagining a world filled with mostly level 1 commoners if Magic is a viable alternative. I had played a Factotum a little while back who embraced this concept that the world would be a better place if more people understood and used magic, and he was met with a lot of opposition when his philosophy encountered reality. I think there are likely more barriers to this happening then I've worked out so far, but I appreciate you all thinking along with me.

 

[Dozen]

I proposed that these adventurers would approach the common folk and they would appeal to the everyday man, who could then choose a lifestyle change. A feudal-style community wouldn't have that option, so perhaps the first step would be to appeal to a local Lord to become a benefactor, convince him to mandate his best and brightest peasants participate in said education, and then the rest of the process would occur from there. I dunno.

I'm not saying I'd want to play D&D in such a world. I agree with @Greenfield that this starts to look to much like the world we live in, and there's less appeal. I'm not saying it is a good idea. I'm not saying it would be a playable idea. What I am saying in given what I know about Humans, I'd expect such a process to become inevitable in a magic-infused world. Given the choice between spending a lifetime toiling to farm the land to feed your family, or spending a few years to manufacture one item that would feed all future generations, I think the majority of people would choose the latter, for a wide variety of selfish or selfless reasons.

Now, I'd expect horrible, terrible repercussions within the next few generations of this progress. As POWER becomes more commonly available, the measures needed to contain such power would need to increase, and those with newly acquired freedom that comes from Power would buck against such restraints. @S'mon 's description of a wasteland, resulting in the abuse of too much power and the wars that might result, also appear as one logical conclusion of such a development.

A land that lived thru the midst of this chaos, or the after effects of such chaos, might make for a good campaign. I could see the last remaining Hero, kept alive through powerful devices, saying something like "We wanted to improve Humanity. We were so, so wrong..." and a new wave of PC heroes setting out to wipe such knowledge from the face of the earth, for people's own good. Sooner or later greed and selfishness would kick in before utopia could be achieved.

Let's expand on this thought process. You and the contributors applied the stimuli(that is, magic for the common folk) to the D&D world without addressing one important variable. With all the powerful and benevolent spellcasters abound(among some just so happen to be gods) who are not envious bastards wanting to keep their knowledge to themselves out of spite, the question arises: Why didn't they think of it before? And the answer is that they did. Then realized it's a horrible idea and moved on, hoping their evil counterparts never notice they could ruin the world with charity. The repercussions wouldn't arrive in a few generations. We're talking months.

Don't assume that applying magic instanty imporves life at large, because while in the real world it certainly would(and the equalient did), in the D&D cosmology there's still the issue of Good and Evil. That is, the constant divinely enforced conflict between the two. Here the majority of people can be described as Neutral, and leaving out the extreme alignments(LG, LE, CG, CE) from a survey would barely register as a margin of error. In our beloved fantasy setting, extremists, while still few in-between, are part of everyday life, and Evil outnumbers Good, say, 9 to 1? I might be a little too generous here. The endless bickering of outsiders on the Lower Planes and the labile unity between the Upper ones are the only reasons Good as a concept hasn't been wiped out yet. The Usually Evil races keep pressure on the rest of the Primes, and the racism that arises from that along with the opposition between Law and Chaos weakens Good even further. Wars are fought between people who from an angel's point of view should by all acounts be friends. This is what keeps the Material Plane(s) from advancing economically. For thousands of years every world at large has been stagnating, and almost stuck at it's given level of technology. Now, by sharing the knowledge of magic with the masses... you make everything worse.

Why? Right now, not everyone's part of the fight. Oh, almost every Good person is, for sure, since they are the single most meddling force ever to enter the multiverse, but a lot of evil and neutral people stay away from this pointless war of philosophies only because they are poor or lack the guts - they stay at home and make sure the handful of people they care about doesn't starve rather than engage in a conflict they cannot win. They are partially the reason genocide of always evil races is misguided; these guys don't even have a chance to act vile, willingness be damned. But add common, if low level magic to the equation, and next to everybody with enough mettle and a single positive mental stat jumps into the fray on their own accord. Add some tyrants who enforces military service, and this number rises higher. For every creature that joins the war effort on behalf of the heavens, there will be hundreds to stand in line on the other side. If Good doesn't fall in a few weeks, their lives will still be comparably worse than before, and the cantrips they can now cast won't change that. Every spell and magic item they have will be used for self defense more often than not. In the end, the only people who deserved your help in the first place got royally screwed over, and evil people aren't much better off, as they can't leave each other alone for sh*t.

So we need to do something to prevent this from happening, possibly before the original plan starts. And that's... well, I have no idea. Thoughts?

 

[MDK]

Not all worlds have an eternal battle between Good and Evil (or Law/Chaos for that matter); I never liked the notion and tossed it out right at the start.
Good and evil exist in the world for much the same reason it exists in the real world: some people by nature are generous, others are selfish. Their upbringing (nurture) compounds this, or weakens it. And yes, this means no race is inherently evil, but they DO have certain tendencies, partly inborn, partly from culture.
Orcs are agressive and value strength and battle prowess because they live in a harsh environments where, among other things, farming is difficult and being eaten or trampled by a dinosaur is a real danger. Their culture (well, the feel of it anyway) is a cross between klinong and mongolian nomads. Goblins are generally cowardly, good at stealth, and they LOVE shiny stuff, but magic frightens them. Honour is something they really couldn't care less about.
Other races have other tendencies, and since they all live in the same world, strife occurs as they compete for the same resources. While living space is effectively unlimited, nobody likes to travel another 100 miles through the wilderness if it's easier to kick out the current inhabitants of this nice area right here, and food isn't unlimited to begin with.
Now in some areas, (notably Anankay and surroundings), magic HAS turned life much towards what we call civilisation, but even so, not everyone is a magician, either because they lack the interest, or because they lack the brains.
If you equate Intelligence with IQ, then Int10 = IQ100. Now look up an Gauss curve for IQ, and you find that only 27% of any given population actually has the intelligence to LEARN spells (IQ110+ or Int 11+). Now the overlap with wisdom and charisma is not 100%, so the potential spell casting population is somewhat larger, but since not everyone capable of doing so will BECOME a spellcaster, I very much doubt even 1 in 5, never mind 1 in 4 or more people will be able to do magic even at the lowest level.
Look a bit further on the curve, and you see that IQ 130, (or Int 13) is even rarer: 2,5%. Meaning your average hamlet of 50 people will have exactly ONE person capable of learning third level spells, and POSSIBLY higher levels.
Int 19, needed to cast Wish, equates an IQ of 190; current IQ tests fall apart at those levels (as there's not enough people to test them on to make sure they actually work), but in our real world, with its 7 billion people, the number of people with that sort of intelligence is probably a few dozen at best, and probably less.
In a mideaval world with its much lower population, the Int19 wizard could well be all by himself.
Now obviously, statboosts from level-up and magic increases the numbers somewhat, but even so, I think a world where EVERYONE is a caster is flat-out impossible.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

@Dozen , I see what you've got going there, and I think this is the limiting factor. As I touched on briefly in my first post, the only thing I can see holding back progress is danger and conflicts, and I hadn't considered that deities themselves would actively work against the expansion of knowledge.

But yeah, if this happened, it would turn out badly. Arguably, in our own world, the increase in technology and all the ways we've simplifies life has lead to cultural unhappiness and an increase in leasure time has lead to increased pursuits of entertainment, not education and progress. I'd expect such a system to break down. Add in the more militant nature of the D&D world and it's like handing everybody a gun, while people make increasingly bigger guns.

@MDK , hm... I had assumed the majority of commoners would have atleast a 10 in the appropriate mental stats, I hadn't considered those with negative modifiers. If 10 is the middle ground than for every 11 there's also a 9 and anyone with a 9 or below would be unable to be a caster. This is a good point that would alter my figures.

 

[MDK]

As the saying has it: Considder how stupid the average man is. Then realise half of them are dumber than that.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

A feudal-style community wouldn't have that option, so perhaps the first step would be to appeal to a local Lord to become a benefactor, convince him to mandate his best and brightest peasants participate in said education, and then the rest of the process would occur from there. I dunno.

I think that's a much more likely option. The nobles would still want to hang onto control. So now these community items belong to the lord of the area.

But these UMD guys are no longer peasants, they're essentially merchants. They're the new middle class, an issue usually only given lip service in D&D. Pretty soon you'd have an item-crafting guild, with exclusionary rules. You need to pass rigorous tests, with nepotism, favoritism, social skills, and so forth giving you acceptance or excluding you. These exclusionary rules might have to wait until the first set of retired adventurers die, which could cause conflicts if any of those adventurers were elves

You'd still have a medieval society that looks like what really existed, only the middle class includes lots of people who can bend reality (I would presume any full mage, rather than an item crafter, would still be considered middle class).

As for Int, I believe the following:
1) Unlike PCs, NPCs would use a random 3d6 model. The number of potential spellcasters would be reduced.
2) I think of Int being measured as IQ 100 + 5 per point of Int above 10. (This means a person with IQ 110, like John Gotti*, would have Int 12. I find it hard to believe that a successful mob boss was running around with an Int of only 11.)

Measuring IQ this way means a really smart person, going into the gifted program or who has a Mensa certificate, has an Int of 18 and IQ 140. This would represent about 2% of the population, IIRC.

*No, I can no longer recall where I got this figure from, sorry.

 

[MDK]

2) I think of Int being measured as IQ 100 + 5 per point of Int above 10. (This means a person with IQ 110, like John Gotti*, would have Int 12. I find it hard to believe that a successful mob boss was running around with an Int of only 11.)

Measuring IQ this way means a really smart person, going into the gifted program or who has a Mensa certificate, has an Int of 18 and IQ 140. This would represent about 2% of the population, IIRC.

Actaully, in the real world, giftedness offcially begins at 130 (mathematical reasons: 2 standard deviations), and covers exactly 2.5% of humanity.
Turning IQ into Int the way you suggest gives the problems at the low end: by your reasoning, IQ50 would equal Int 0, which is obviously wrong.
As for an Int11 bad guy being too dumb: given that the average IQ of university students is just below 120 (Int12 in my reckoning), I think he'd be doing ok; most illegal work does not require a degree.