The impacts of Fantasy on (fantasy) society

[Endur]

They can make magic less useful like they tried with 4E where the nearly only thing magic can do is combat.
And even if magic is only good for combat it will still turn the fantasy combat into WW2 than knights fighting against each other in melee.

This raises a good point. When you look at Gandalf, he mostly used his sword in melee combat and used spells at range.

If A Game of Thrones has spells, they are mostly not used in combat.

Perhaps D&D 5e should support a ritual magic system, where the only spells are rituals and all combat is non-magical.

 

[gyor]

It really varies between worlds. In FR thier are tons of powerful villians, but they limited in influence by other powerful forces both good and bad. Think the cold war idea of mutually assured destruction. People turn to advanturers, because who else would be stupid enough to do that sort of work.

In Eberron magical war almost destroyed them, its why no one wants another war.

Athas, magic costs too much to abuse recklessly.

I will say most practical useful magic tends to be divine or Primal. Magificent manion, permanacy, polymorph any object and wish, and divination spells being the only non combat magic that would be useful in day to day off the top of my head for wizards.

Clerics got healing, summoning food and water, light, heal wounds, cure disease, blindness, protection from element, magic to keep your dead well dead not undead, verious wards, ressurect, animate objects, mend, miracle, water breathing, ect... If its practical magic odds are your going to see a cleric or some other divine class. Plus clerics are usually more common then wizards.

It actually makes the role of religion and its interactions with the state more interesting.

Think about it your kingdom may have some wizards on staff, but mostly in the army as advisers or adventures. The churchs are who you turn to for most advanced services. You don't need magic for dung sweepers, but you'll want the churchs to handle your fire department, healthcare, help with defence, help with criminal investiagations, and fight starvation, and more. That's in addition to non magical stuff like birth, death, marriage, divorce, records, and other duties depending on the church. Oh and thiers multiple Gods. If you thought the middle evil church was powerful, it'd be nothing compared to churchs in say FR.

 

[delericho]

There have been various attempts at doing books of this sort in the past. I wouldn't be averse to another one, although I wouldn't want the Core Rulebook (or DMG, if we're sticking with the 'big three') to spend an undue amount of time on it.

The thing is that D&D magic as written, if used in a remotely logical manner, would change the world beyond recognition. There's basically no getting away from that - even something as basic as the continual light spell does the job.

And there's not really any getting around it - in that standard "points of light" setting usually portrayed, having well-lit city streets would be an enormous boon to our threatened city. And with CL having no material cost to cast... (And, given how vulnerable they are to ambush, the Mage's Guild would almost certainly make getting those city streets lit a priority!)

So, the choices appear to be, "change the world beyond recognition", "change the D&D assumptions on magic drastically", or "don't look too closely". Pick one!

 

[Hassassin]

I would definitely like to see something like this. A few pages in the DMG world building section would be good for ideas, but campaign settings should have even more details.

In addition to "this is what the default rules should imply about societies" I would like to see "how to adjust rules if you want societies to look like X", where X are different typical fantasy genre settings.

 

[Alan Shutko]

I've got to disagree with you there. D&D magic is almost entirely limited to combat usage. I've griped for years that D&D magic is 10,000 ways to blow things up and not one damm way to heat your house.

That's one of the reasons I liked the Alphatia sourcebook in Mystara. It DID give spells for heating your house, as well as building it.

 

[Mattachine]

The assumption in OD&D and early AD&D was that magic was rare. The majority of the clergy at a church, for example, were non-casting NPCs, perhaps with a 1st-5th level cleric leading them. Wizards of any real power (9th level or higher) were to be very rare, and magic items even rarer.

I think what may have happened is that since adventuring parties contained casters, and some published modules contained casters, players got the impression that magic, casters, and magic items were, in fact, common. In my AD&D campaigns, we were able to maintain the idea that the characters were rare and unusual, especially the casters.

In 3e and 4e, though, magic was so assumed, so common--being able to buy, sell, and trade magic items was a default assumption. Unfortunately, the game worlds didn't change to accommodate this--Eberron was made for it, from the start. That's why it works. FR and Greyhawk are weird when magic is common--why have masses of medieval-style troops, traditional castles, and so forth, when the opposing army is going to have casters? That would be like the modern US Military building colonial-style forts, even though we have satellite communications and air support.

I played in a long-term 3e FR game where the DM ran a rare and unusual magic sort of game--it was weird, though, since most players had casters. Also, magic items were hard to come by, but the assumptions in the game (about expected PC wealth/magic) made monsters and encounters much harder to deal with. Over time, the DM relented and made magic common, but then many other aspects of the game world didn't make sense. *sigh*

 

[Minigiant]

The assumption in OD&D and early AD&D was that magic was rare. The majority of the clergy at a church, for example, were non-casting NPCs, perhaps with a 1st-5th level cleric leading them. Wizards of any real power (9th level or higher) were to be very rare, and magic items even rarer.

I think what may have happened is that since adventuring parties contained casters, and some published modules contained casters, players got the impression that magic, casters, and magic items were, in fact, common. In my AD&D campaigns, we were able to maintain the idea that the characters were rare and unusual, especially the casters.

The problem was not the rarity of magic and high level people.

The problem was that the little bit of magic that was there did nothing and no one reacted to their existence. The ten wizards higher than level 5 sat around playing solitaire all day. The dozen living fighters with levels over 6 in the world spend their days cleaning their swords. The monsters in the dungeon never use that powerful item in the cave they live in to conquer lands.

So when your party levels up, you might guess there is a more powerful being out there who crafted the item spent this whole time. In the base setting, these people do nothing and affect no one. If they are dead, they spent huge gaps of their lives doing nothing. Five people with double digit levels in a world of 1's and 2's can wreck the joint nice.

The newer settings try to explain what people with magic items, high level spells, and/or lots of levels do with their lives. But the base genetic world has no written assumptions

Hopefully the D&DN/5e DMV explains the lives of the people outside of the PCs.

 

[Andor]

The assumption in OD&D and early AD&D was that magic was rare. The majority of the clergy at a church, for example, were non-casting NPCs, perhaps with a 1st-5th level cleric leading them. Wizards of any real power (9th level or higher) were to be very rare, and magic items even rarer.

Well... that's what the DMG said the world was like. Then you played B1 and in the first adventure a group of minor humanoids in a backwater nowhere had a dozen magic items in their possesion. They were in yours by the end.

The world the books claimed existed and the one the modules portrayed were not at all the same place. And guess which one we played in. D&D was never as magic-lite as it liked to claim.

 

[Mattachine]

Absolutely, Andor.

I tried playing the magic lite game, but using modules changed how the game actually went, and colored my view as the DM.

In my current homebrew game, magic is actually rare, magic items are almost non-existant, and people with PC class levels are unusual. I then needed a series of house rules to change monsters and wealth and so forth, and I still run into occasional snags.

 

[Buugipopuu]

I've got to disagree with you there. D&D magic is almost entirely limited to combat usage. I've griped for years that D&D magic is 10,000 ways to blow things up and not one damm way to heat your house.

What. Are we playing the same game? I have a Transmuter who disagrees with you. Even before Polymorph Any Object, a utility Transmuter will revolutionise entire industries. Mainly mining, construction and chemical.