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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5844576" data-attributes="member: 6669384">Our group doesn't play in the published worlds of WOTC/TSR, and I know of quite a few others that freelance it as well.In most worlds though I'd imagine that the acceptance of magic is a variable depending on where you are at the moment.  I've seen any number of players who proposed setting up a transit web to facilitate quick and easy travel.  I've also seen DMs shoot it down, in character, through the voices of various royalty who don't want to provide an invading army instant transport into their major cities.  Yeah, we all know that an army of any size can afford to hire the spellcaster to set up a Teleport Circle, but the nobility want their enemies to at least have to work for it.People have a natural fear of anything they don't understand, anything unfamiliar, and for a lot of common people magic falls solidly into that category.It's kind of like knowing that a neighbor has the only collection of assault weapons in the city.  You may know, like and trust the guy, but it's still disturbing.  And if you don't happen to like the guy...  it's bad.In game, our Druid just offered to perform the Blessing of the Fields for a small town (i.e. cast Plant Growth).  They were hesitant.  Not that they didn't want the security of a good harvest, but it worried them that there were spell casters in town powerful enough to consider this a small public service, one so minor that they didn't demand pay.  (The local Druids usually charge, but they've gone missing within the past year, so we aren't undercutting their business.)To the people of this area we're unfathomably rich, so rich that many are afraid to even talk to us.  People with the kind of money and power we have can usually order someone flogged for looking at them funny, which ironically causes everyone to look at us funny, then look away quickly, lest we notice.So, are folk like this afraid of magic?  Unless it comes from their local priest, or a traveling entertainer?  You bet they are.  They see it as strange and potentially very dangerous. And they certainly aren't rich enough to afford magic items of their own (going back to the economy thing.)If we were in a major city it would be another matter.  Where there's enough money to pay for spell casting services (as priced by the table in the book), people who can fill that need will tend to gather.  And even then, the actual market for such services is very limited.In the economy of the game world, even in a major city there's a hard dividing line between adventurer class people and civilians.  Consider that a +1 dagger costs over 2,000 gp.  A skilled craftsman can make a gold piece a day.  That simple item would cost that craftsman about five and a half years' pay.  A +3 longsword?  Over 50 years of labor to pay for that.So magic items are effectively priced far beyond the reach of almost anyone you'd see on the streets.An Everburning Torch (50 gp.)?  Several months' pay for the skilled craftsman.  About a year to a year and a half's pay for a common worker.And pocket change for any PC over 3rd or 4th level.Now, like I said, the D&D economic model is badly broken in 3e.  (It's broken even worse in 4e, but that's another story.)  But, like it or not, broken or not, it's the only documented model for the game worlds, and it dictates a lot about how that world works.</blockquote>

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