D&D 5E What high-level spells could warp society?

[Micah Sweet]

I am surprised by how much Purify Food & Drink would change things. The sheer amount of food wastage. The lack of a need for ships to carry water, at all. "Haul up some seawater. I'll purify it. After I've refreshed that shipment of meat and milk and fresh fruit that have spoiled to inedibility, for the seventh time, in the hold. It'll all be fresh as daisies when we reach the new market!"

Mending and Prestidigation (to change colors or warm food) could also hugely revolutionize things, allowing badly worn or soiled items to be maintained for decades (the shoes alone!), but also allowing one to survive in various climates without having to burn fuel to cook or heat your home or bathwater, or, for desert or arctic dwellers burn dung because there's no wood! "Hey, did you use magic to heat this? It doesn't taste like poo!" The costs and techniques for dying clothes, or using cosmetics, or spicing foods, all huge industries, with salt worth almost as much as gold in some places, just trivialized by a cantrip.

Other cantrips that could really change stuff. Acid Splash. Need acid for tanning or etching? No need for the usual ecologically ruinous and expensive mundane supplies. Ray of Frost. Need a 'refrigerator?' Freeze a tub full of water in the basement and use it as an 'icebox.' Or to store your victims. Whatever. Control Flames. We don't need wood to fuel the cooking / heating / forge-fires. We just need someone to recast this cantrip every hour, sort of the household 'lamplighter.' Want to demonstrate almost anything visual or aural as part of a lesson? Maps, anatomy, what a missing relative looks like so that your agents will recognize them? Minor Illusion has the goods. Mold Earth makes all sorts of tiresome physical earthmoving, from tilling fields to constructing earthworks to flattening roads to digging graves go by in a snap. Druidcraft could seriously mess up the perfumery industry (you want to smell like roses? Boring. Try jasmine! Or vanilla!), or seriously help agricultural planting / preparation with it's weather prediction utility, or even just allow picking fruit before it's ripe, and trusting to Druidcraft to ripen it at the point of sale (rather than have it be soft and squishy and fragrantly attracting bugs through it's long journey to market, pick it while it's firm and green and 'travels well!').

1st level Sorcerers might be specialists, roaming around maintaining people's 'iceboxes' with Ray of Frost, for a monthly 'subscription' (or pay for a one-time visit, cheaper in the long run to buy the regular service!). 1st level Wizards would have the flexibility to be able to swap out their spell choices for 'today's commissions,' and not be stuck with just the one market niche.

But every sailing ship would want to have someone on board (and, ideally, more than one!) who can cast Purify Food & Drink! No need for barrels full of fresh water = More room for cargo! No fear of food spoiling, even the hardest-travelling of produce? Nothing squiffy like how sometimes medieval era ships would keep live goats or chickens in the hold and butcher them mid-journey because they couldn't preserve meat that long.

Animal Friendship and Speak with Animals would utterly transform domestication. Just, ridiculously. And that's long before magic gets to the point of Awakening animals and plants, which would be another quantum leap in societal transformation! "Yes, these are my lead sentry dogs, in the fine chain barding and spiffy tabards. This is Maxwell and Percival. Please don't get them mixed up, Percy's a union rep, and they both have levels in Barbarian, and no sense of humor..."

If only 5e still had Shrink Item. Now there was a society altering spell! "Yeah, gnolls got the entire caravan. Ate the horses and everything. Mount spells aren't free! Well, yeah, they are, but still, it's the point of the thing! Anywho, they also burned the fake cargo. But I got away with my underwear! Which, let me just, there we go!" Toss underwear on the ground and mutters a word, and it transforms into a chest full of gems. "Your family jewels were in my underwear, which was not meant to sound like an off-color joke, but here we are..."

And yes, Simulacrum. Just ridiculous. "1500 and a days work to make a red dragon to assault his keep. The look on his face? Priceless! The spell to color it white was just icing on the cake, and pretty much free, so his artillerists, of course, started with fireballs! Total waste of time! I was considering making a simulacrum of myself, and having it create another simulacrum of me, and that one create another simulacrum of me, and so on, for a month, until there were 30 of me, and bum rush his castle with an army of me, but an Augury gave me the cryptic hint that 'The GM will say, Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies' if I do that..."

I love everything about this!

 

[TwoSix]

I played a game for about a year in Korea where the PCs had to roll 2d10 to see how many levels of magic user they could have for their character. i.e. their "innate magic potential".

Something like that, although the idea would be more implemented as a setting "concept", not something I would roll for each NPC (or every PC!).

As a rough baseline, the amount of people who can "handle" a certain amount of spell power, would be a decaying exponential function. (Which I'll do a rough fit for in a bit.)

Fora population of 10 million people, roughly 90% can't cast leveled spells at all, although a decent percentage can eventually learn cantrips. Out of those million who can handle 1st level spells, only about 10% can handle 2nd level spells, and 10% of those can do 3rd level spells. (So out of 10,000,000 people, only 10,000 have the capacity to handle fireball, revivify, etc.)

The drop off is slower but steady from there; only 1% of those 10,000 can cast 6th level spells, and out of those 100, maybe 5 eventually break through to 9th level spells.

In a setting with a few hundred million people, that would give me 100-150 elites who can cast 9th level spells, and a few thousand capable of Tier 3 magic. That's roughly the feel I'm going for. This also explains why there are so many high level fighters, rogues, or other non or low magic classes around, despite the general power level being so high.

 

[Maxperson]

I played a game for about a year in Korea where the PCs had to roll 2d10 to see how many levels of magic user they could have for their character. i.e. their "innate magic potential".

Were clerics and druids handled like that, or just the arcane classes?

 

[Maxperson]

Something like that, although the idea would be more implemented as a setting "concept", not something I would roll for each NPC (or every PC!).

As a rough baseline, the amount of people who can "handle" a certain amount of spell power, would be a decaying exponential function. (Which I'll do a rough fit for in a bit.)

Fora population of 10 million people, roughly 90% can't cast leveled spells at all, although a decent percentage can eventually learn cantrips. Out of those million who can handle 1st level spells, only about 10% can handle 2nd level spells, and 10% of those can do 3rd level spells. (So out of 10,000,000 people, only 10,000 have the capacity to handle fireball, revivify, etc.)

The drop off is slower but steady from there; only 1% of those 10,000 can cast 6th level spells, and out of those 100, maybe 5 eventually break through to 9th level spells.

In a setting with a few hundred million people, that would give me 100-150 elites who can cast 9th level spells, and a few thousand capable of Tier 3 magic. That's roughly the feel I'm going for. This also explains why there are so many high level fighters, rogues, or other non or low magic classes around, despite the general power level being so high.

That post seems to assume that everyone who can use magic is found and taught. Is that the case?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What I'm thinking right now, to limit the amount of "turn the entire setting into magitech", that while LEVELS are high, being born with the gift of magic, especially high level magic, is very uncommon.

It doesn't impact the PCs (because PCs can always be the rare talents), but NPCs have natural limits on the amount of magic they're capable of.

I can never get behind the idea that PCs follow different narrative rules than NPCs. It's bad enough that for practicality they follow different mechanical rules. I'd rather not make any further compromises.

 

[SkidAce]

Something like that, although the idea would be more implemented as a setting "concept", not something I would roll for each NPC (or every PC!).
...

We cribbed info from "Magical Medieval Society" and made an excell sheet for the larger kingdoms.

Ex: 10% of population was class level 1 equivalent, half of that was level 2, half level 3, etc.

Of the 10%, 6% were fighters, 2% rogues, 1% cleric, 1% mage.

Repeatedly halving population to determine class levels seemed a pretty common house rule back in the day.

 

[SkidAce]

Were clerics and druids handled like that, or just the arcane classes?

At the time it was just arcane. Dont remember our reasoning, other than divine is "bestowed".

 

[SkidAce]

That post seems to assume that everyone who can use magic is found and taught. Is that the case?

I feel we used charts like that to just eyeball the highest levels of various classes in certain areas.

To get a feel of the area so to speak.


I keep everything, let me look up my old files for fun and see what they look like.

 

[TwoSix]

That post seems to assume that everyone who can use magic is found and taught. Is that the case?

Nope. That's the amount of people who are capable of that sort of magic, not who do.

I'm imagining that those who do have the capability generally become aware of it, and it might even just manifest spontaneously if not properly trained/channeled. (I imagine sorcerers are far more prevalent among those with high magic potential.)

 

[TwoSix]

I can never get behind the idea that PCs follow different narrative rules than NPCs. It's bad enough that for practicality they follow different mechanical rules. I'd rather not make any further compromises.

I think it can work even with your preferences. Assume a population of 100,000,000 people. Out of those, only a small subset are born with the right mindset/desire/talents to become an adventurer.

The PCs you play are simply a random sampling OF that subset. That's how it's worked for every version of D&D since the beginning; you've never been forced to roll up 14 farmers before you roll the guy who actually WANTS to adventure.