D&D 5E What are your biggest immersion breakers, rules wise?

[JiffyPopTart]

But you would not need a mobile phone with sending magic, would you?

You also wont need explosives and firearms if magic can do that for you.

Yes and no. You don't really need the incredibly complicated crossbow in a world where you already have well made shortbows...but yet they were developed. The reasoning for the new technology is as varied as the different forms the new technology takes.

You don't NEED a good camera in a cellphone, but yet now every new cellphone as a great camera in it and nobody buys low-end digital cameras anymore.

You don't NEED an electric car, but some people find the electric car help protect the environment.

You don't NEED to step foot on the mood, but lots of money has been spent to go there and pick up some dust and rocks.

You don't NEED to build a functioning binary computer in Minecraft but someone spent the time to see "if it could be done".

Progress is just progress and it happens for reasons up to and including "I just wanted to see if I could do it".

I'd almost make the argument that if the greatest of the Dwarven smiths is making a sword the same way they learned how to do it 500 years previously they really aren't that great of a smith....they are just a well built machine.

 

[dave2008]

Silver is bactericidal too
Use of Silver in the Prevention and Treatment of Infections: Silver Review

That is why you make a wish and throw a coin into a well. The silver helps to "purify" the water.

 

[Garthanos]

That is why you make a wish and through a coin into a well. The silver helps to "purify" the water.

silvered mirrors reject vampires ... they must be bacteria

 

[Tony Vargas]

Progress is just progress and it happens for reasons up to and including "I just wanted to see if I could do it".
I'd almost make the argument that if the greatest of the Dwarven smiths is making a sword the same way they learned how to do it 500 years previously they really aren't that great of a smith....they are just a well built machine.

In a modern or post-modern world-view, sure.
In the nigh-vanished traditionalist world-view, the Golden Age is in the past, the oldest book has the best answer, and the best you can do is learn to things the traditional way, so you can be /almost/ as good as your predecessor. D&D has trappings of that sort of world-view - the wizard searching for power through knowledge by poring over ancient tomes rather than doing original research - but it ultimately doesn't carry through with it.

 

[ChaosOS]

If you want a D&D setting with progress and invention, that's one of the core premises of Eberron. Elsewise, each setting has its own explanations - FR seems to be the gods won't let it happen.

 

[iserith]

You don't NEED an electric car, but some people find the electric car help protect the environment.

I drive an electric car not so much for the environment as the license it gives me to be smug about it.

 

[Oofta]

Yes and no. You don't really need the incredibly complicated crossbow in a world where you already have well made shortbows...but yet they were developed. The reasoning for the new technology is as varied as the different forms the new technology takes.

You don't NEED a good camera in a cellphone, but yet now every new cellphone as a great camera in it and nobody buys low-end digital cameras anymore.

You don't NEED an electric car, but some people find the electric car help protect the environment.

You don't NEED to step foot on the mood, but lots of money has been spent to go there and pick up some dust and rocks.

You don't NEED to build a functioning binary computer in Minecraft but someone spent the time to see "if it could be done".

Progress is just progress and it happens for reasons up to and including "I just wanted to see if I could do it".

I'd almost make the argument that if the greatest of the Dwarven smiths is making a sword the same way they learned how to do it 500 years previously they really aren't that great of a smith....they are just a well built machine.

I think there are a lot of factors at play that don't apply to the real world. It takes years to learn how to use a bow effectively which is a reason for crossbows. But if you're an elf that just makes it a fun hobby you focused on for a bit. Relative to a human, an elf spending years learning something is nothing.

The same goes for dwarves ... they've been perfecting metalwork for centuries which is why so many people run around in armor.

But other things? Well, who says electricity isn't a bit wonky when there's also magic? I take the approach that if something simulates life closely enough it may come to life. That's potentially really, really dangerous. There's no reason to assume that gunpowder works in a magical world exactly the same as it does on earth. Or, if it does work that there wouldn't be simple counter-measures that stopped guns from being anything more than a novelty. Gunpowder was difficult to manufacture for a long time until some alchemists started uncovering secrets of chemistry. Would they have discovered those secrets if they had instead found a magical way to transmute materials? We separate magic and chemistry, there's no reason they would.

In my own campaign I use a combination of the above along with a somewhat regular cycle of destruction because magic can be very devastating in the wrong hands. Not anything along the lines of FR, but every few centuries things tend to go boom.

But all of this varies depending on campaign of course. If you don't like pseudo-medeieval take Eberron for a spin for example. There's nothing wrong with a magi-tech world. My own campaign has a lot of low-level-not-in-the-PHB magic because it makes sense to me. The local hedge witch's poultice works almost like antibiotics, just not in a few seconds.

 

[Garthanos]

I think there are a lot of factors at play that don't apply to the real world. It takes years to learn how to use a bow effectively which is a reason for crossbows. But if you're an elf that just makes it a fun hobby you focused on for a bit. Relative to a human, an elf spending years learning something is nothing.

In my game worlds I evened that score humans are reincarnating and they learn faster as a side effect there of (they are able to recall tidbits subconsciously) that 8 years he spent in childhood made him the equivalent of an ageless elf spending many many times that. Or at least the heroes all seem to be of this cut - so not every human remembers or comes off like a prodigy but its very common among the extra-ordinaries. Immortals which arent always Ealves, are sometimes former X from so long ago that they do not remember things that clearly which happened 1500 years ago and may have similar needs to recover their memories.... so seem to advance much like the human prodigies (reincarnative heroes).

Player characters in D&D seem to advance in whatever their fields at such an incredible rate they are all prodigies like Alexander the Great and Cu Cuchulain various others of history and legend.

 

[Bohandas]

I liked the things you pointed out because many are often overlooked. Otoh if you wanted to make things more realistic you would get from one into the other e.g. every wound caused would create chance for infection.

I partially agree on your asumptions on progress. Yes, if people had their divine little (big) helpers active for them all the time, and magic would be a popular tool to help with every day tasks (partially that's the case in the eberron setting) people could eventually concentrate on progress.

But you would not need a mobile phone with sending magic, would you?

You also wont need explosives and firearms if magic can do that for you.

But there are constraints also: either magic is not so common and the divine help does not always appear or even if it does: Will people not become lazy instead? Why should they invest in science if living is commode enough? You can see the proof of this in some aborigine tribes which are discovered deep in the jungle. Their life is perfect as it is for them, they do not need cellphones to be happy do they? They basically are still in stone age level of technology not even having invented the wheel.

So you can see it can go both ways. The technical capabilities in humanities past was amazing in some areas at some time periods, and also some of it got lost again later on.

E.g. a nowadays medic could operate using the instruments which were available in ancient Rome. In ancient Rome they could operate appendix, opaque eye lenses (using hollow needles) and brain tumors. They knew about hygiene and sepsis. Only thing they did not have was sophisticated anesthetics, it was only alcohol and maybe opium.
On tech level they had flowing water floor heating and canalization. They had hydraulic catapults with pistons made of brass and leather. This knowledge got lost later on.
In the medieval times this medical knowledge mostly was gone, those 2000 year old books from Latin doctors were the best stuff available. Only Arab and Jewish medics were a little closer to our modern medicine.
But the tech level could be very high also. First pocket watch was from 1400 or so. They had lathes could cut threads in metal etc. Of course they had no electricity to power these tools but if you look at cathedrals or military equipment of the later middle ages you see what they could produce even with the limitations at hand.

So a stasis is not that much of a problem in my point of view, it is not that unbelievable.

If it comes down to it magic doesn't seem to advance much either outside of Eberron.

You also wont need explosives and firearms if magic can do that for you.

Firearms would have the same primary advantage over magic that they have over bows and arrows. They're easy to use. They require less training than a bow and less strength than either a bow or a crossbow.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I'd almost make the argument that if the greatest of the Dwarven smiths is making a sword the same way they learned how to do it 500 years previously they really aren't that great of a smith....they are just a well built machine.

What if that's what consumers want? Or what if its for tradition and culture's sake? Smiths in Japan are still making katana the centuries-old way since the current design came about during the Muromachi period, and international companies also offer the laminated construction despite modern access to uniform and higher quality steels.