Level Up (A5E) Spells that would ruin the world

[TYP]

I'm not really comfortable with at-will cantrips either. But, it is such a boon to PC power that it is very hard for players to give up.

I blame Pathfinder.

 

[tetrasodium]

Calculate: This gives you early computer levels of mathematical power. A caster with this spell can do the math in seconds that it would take the greatest math genius to ever live an 1 hour to do....that is actually obscenely fast. A cabal of casters with this simple cantrip could be crunching the numbers done in like 1960's society with computing.

so much more when paired with other spells. early computers operated by punch card & had paltry amounts of memory. ENIAC was the first computer with built in memory in like 1945 with a (physically) gigantic 100 word memory capacity with each word being 20 bits. Back in the 3.5 days there were theorycraft ways of making a computer with animate dead & magic mouth as logic gates and memory. It would take a lot of space sure, but with magic mouth's if->then functionality you could use it as computer memory to go with calculate or a babbage difference engine with enough precision if not some hybrid of the two.

I don't think it would "ruin the world", but it absolutely would accelerate certain developments

edit: difference engine was just a calculator, the analytical engine was the more advanced never built successor that had logic

 

[xiphumor]

An ironic point here is that magic would probably stifle a few developments as well. The Romans invented a steam engine (Hero of Alexandria did, specifically), but they only used it to fake miracles at temples because as far as manual labor was concerned, slaves were considered sufficient. I imagine that in a magical world, many inventions would never be considered because a magical effect could replicate it decently enough, even if the magical effect was worse.

 

[nevin]

Long time player, first time poster, at least here.

I'm starting up an A5E campaign, and am very excited about the many improvements. However, one of the things I'm not looking forward to is the Alter Self spell, which for my money, is one of the most broken spells in the game. My personal vendetta against Alter Self began with a player whose sorcerer would use it, along with a Hat of Disguise, to gain total impunity to consequences for his actions. The hat was always activated, leading to strings of saving throws from NPCs observing his crimes, and when he'd get in a pickle he'd use Alter Self to avoid the guards. I was trying to run a low-ish magic game, so I didn't want guards walking around with items that cast Detect Magic, not least because enterprising parties would would soon lay their hands on such an item and further unbalance the game.

To me, it seems like Alter Self and Disguise self would be the favorite spells of sex offenders and general a-holes, and I shiver to think of a world where that kind of magic would be available. Looking at T&T, the A5E Hat of Disguise is only 250 gp. 250 gp!?! I shiver to think what the spoiled noble sons of the A5E would would get up to with that kind of magic.

So, what spells have you encountered that, if used by actual people, would lead to unexpected and horrific effects?

If you are allowing magic in a game and law enforcement, kings men, nobles etc can't have access to it then suck it up you've created your own problem.

Magic only works if other people have it and can counter it. Otherwise every single level of spells for all casters has something that can be horribly abused. Sounds like you want to run a Gurps fantasy game without magic instead of D&D

 

[Stalker0]

If you are allowing magic in a game and law enforcement, kings men, nobles etc can't have access to it then suck it up you've created your own problem.

So lets play that out then. Ok our villain has a hat of disguise, what could our law enforcement have to counter it?

And remember we can't go too expensive here. If every police force has to have 5k in magic items to counter a few hundred... your quickly on the losing end of the economics war.

Now what might make more sense is an "FBI" like group. A special forces under the king lets say, that deals with special magical crimes. So after a few times of this "thief who seems to have 1000 faces", perhaps the special forces are brought in, with their specialty equipment, to deal with the case. That could be a fun campaign idea actually, the CSI of dnd

 

[tetrasodium]

So lets play that out then. Ok our villain has a hat of disguise, what could our law enforcement have to counter it?

And remember we can't go too expensive here. If every police force has to have 5k in magic items to counter a few hundred... your quickly on the losing end of the economics war.

Now what might make more sense is an "FBI" like group. A special forces under the king lets say, that deals with special magical crimes. So after a few times of this "thief who seems to have 1000 faces", perhaps the special forces are brought in, with their specialty equipment, to deal with the case. That could be a fun campaign idea actually, the CSI of dnd

aura & residual aura detecting methods similar to fingerprints or dna is an easy one. Not everything NPCs do needs to be doable by PCs. As to disguises, look into the ones used by thre unibomber when shipping his packages without magic or the kind of movie magic multihour mapeup & prostetic session type stuff

 

[Stalker0]

aura & residual aura detecting methods similar to fingerprints or dna is an easy one. Not everything NPCs do needs to be doable by PCs. As to disguises, look into the ones used by thre unibomber when shipping his packages without magic or the kind of movie magic multihour mapeup & prostetic session type stuff

I do think it should be kept to core spells and items though, I mean the dm always can say just xyz, that’s not even a challenge.

The challenge is can the dm counter these abilities without creating their own custom stuff

 

[Faolyn]

So lets play that out then. Ok our villain has a hat of disguise, what could our law enforcement have to counter it?

Have a victim or guards throw something strong-smell and long-lasting on the villain. Anything from strong perfume to skunk musk. Hats of disguise don't do anything about smell. And if you're worried about prestidigitation, don't forget that cleans 1 square foot at a time, and a human has about 22 square feet of skin.

And then give the guards bloodhounds.

 

[Kinematics]

So a lot of the listed worries remind me of an anime — Ascendance of a Bookworm — and how it dealt with what could be considered similar problems.

First, as a medieval society, it uses mercantilism, not capitalism. The merchant guild and the various production guilds were everything, economically, and they strongly defended their monopolies. In Bookworm, the main character invents a wood-based paper, and that puts her in conflict with the guild that has the rights to make parchment (an animal skin-based paper).

And that right is enforced by something akin to the Blood-Writ Bargain spell. A contract was made, guaranteed by the Lord of the land, which gave the Parchment Guild exclusive rights to make and sell paper. Anyone else anywhere in the territory that violated that contract (knowingly or unknowingly) would be magically punished, and likely killed. The knowledge that such a contract existed, or even could exist, put a huge amount of pressure on anyone else pursuing a production craft that could potentially be under the contractual control of one of the guilds.

One difference that should be noted is that Blood-Writ Bargain only lasts 13 days, while the contracts in Bookworm were (more or less) permanent. It was a fundamental part of how their society's economy worked. It also required the use of a special ink (itself under the contractual control of a certain guild) which was incredibly expensive simply due to the fact that it was necessary to make these contracts, so it wasn't something used casually. The Merchant Guild kept tight control over such matters.

This would put the kibosh on freelancing Fabricate wizards. Still have to deal with however many of them the guilds manage to control, though.

The standard Blood-Writ Bargain spell I think is too easy, though, in that it has no cost at all, just a bit of blood to seal the contract. I don't think it would be too big a problem if it had even some basic level cost associated with it.


On the Alter Self issue, Wands of Magic Detection are fairly cheap. Getting 100% coverage in any area would be difficult, but having them available to higher-ranked guardsmen would not be out of line.

Calculate is not nearly as big a threat. It can only solve an equation; it can't determine what equation would be needed to solve the problem.

Continual Flame would be useful, and somewhat game-changing for any city, but it would run into coverage limits pretty quickly, particularly in terms of sabotage and theft.

 

[tetrasodium]

@Stalker0 Players have skills too. I've had players do that kind of thing using arcana & "artificer's tools" but investigators tools or similar would probably work too. Just because a player can do it doesn't mean that doing it is suitable for the time constraints of the game. Take for example the Knox box & fire services elevator keys, those are almost always using a key that it documented in a way the public can simply look up for their area but you can't buy the blank or have it cut like that& can get in trouble for having one because it's literally a code enforced key that gives the actual key to every commercial building & secured elevator in the region. Even if the player gets the trace aura results tomorrow or next week it's not like they can just pop over to the local police arcane operations center & thumb through the aura imprints made on all of the guest passes & citizen records or whatever

So a lot of the listed worries remind me of an anime — Ascendance of a Bookworm — and how it dealt with what could be considered similar problems.

First, as a medieval society, it uses mercantilism, not capitalism. The merchant guild and the various production guilds were everything, economically, and they strongly defended their monopolies. In Bookworm, the main character invents a wood-based paper, and that puts her in conflict with the guild that has the rights to make parchment (an animal skin-based paper).

And that right is enforced by something akin to the Blood-Writ Bargain spell. A contract was made, guaranteed by the Lord of the land, which gave the Parchment Guild exclusive rights to make and sell paper. Anyone else anywhere in the territory that violated that contract (knowingly or unknowingly) would be magically punished, and likely killed. The knowledge that such a contract existed, or even could exist, put a huge amount of pressure on anyone else pursuing a production craft that could potentially be under the contractual control of one of the guilds.

One difference that should be noted is that Blood-Writ Bargain only lasts 13 days, while the contracts in Bookworm were (more or less) permanent. It was a fundamental part of how their society's economy worked. It also required the use of a special ink (itself under the contractual control of a certain guild) which was incredibly expensive simply due to the fact that it was necessary to make these contracts, so it wasn't something used casually. The Merchant Guild kept tight control over such matters.

This would put the kibosh on freelancing Fabricate wizards. Still have to deal with however many of them the guilds manage to control, though.

The standard Blood-Writ Bargain spell I think is too easy, though, in that it has no cost at all, just a bit of blood to seal the contract. I don't think it would be too big a problem if it had even some basic level cost associated with it.


On the Alter Self issue, Wands of Magic Detection are fairly cheap. Getting 100% coverage in any area would be difficult, but having them available to higher-ranked guardsmen would not be out of line.

Calculate is not nearly as big a threat. It can only solve an equation; it can't determine what equation would be needed to solve the problem.

Continual Flame would be useful, and somewhat game-changing for any city, but it would run into coverage limits pretty quickly, particularly in terms of sabotage and theft.

The novels go into a lot more than the anime but this 100%. The way that nobles interact with lower rungs of society through proxies & other stuff like interacting with each other solves a lot of problems for a GM while really making it easy to set different groups apart.