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What Magic Would Be Most Realistically Most Impactful?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7643446" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Agreed.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is controlled by the cheapest transferable permanent magic item that can be created in the setting. Suppose your cheapest permanent transferable magic item costs 2000 days wages, or $100,000 then such items might be very rare toys or baubles but they won't in fact revolutionize house work. Most families can't afford them and those that can would often prefer to employ human domestic help. Your mass produced wand of cleaning and disinfecting if it costs 40 or 80 days wages probably won't ever get mass produced, as the amount of labor that it saves (a few score hours of light cleaning) doesn't pay for the amount of labor that it costs. A few might exist as a bauble for the wealthy bachelor who preferred to be left to their own devices or the like, but you wouldn't expect an industry to exist to create them. Domestic labor would replace them better, and you have to remember that in societies before our own it was excessively rude to the point of being a flaw worthy public condemnation and shunning for the wealthy to not employ significant domestic labor and spread the wealth around. One didn't just deserve the servants owed to ones station, one also had a corresponding responsibility to employ them. Thus, a wealthy person who employs 'Unseen Servants' to do the chores might not be well liked, while the poor person he employs to the chores likely can't afford the 'Unseen Servant' to help them at the job. And again, that's assuming you can make a practical Unseen Servant powered transferable and permanent device cheaply.</p><p></p><p>And keep in mind that a wand, by being spell completion, only passes the test of transferable if basically everyone in the society has magical training. And if that is the case, why buy the wand when they can cheaply do the spells themselves?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This I fully agree would be a thing by the D&D rules. Every large town is likely to have one or more theaters where illusionists tell stories augmented by their magic as a normal and respected artistic tradition. Smaller towns will likely look forward to the arrival of the travelling illusionist or troupe thereof. This is however I think more likely to be like Shakespearean theater or Homeric story telling where the players don't need to complain to the audience that they can't recreate the scope of the Battle of Agincourt on the stage than it is to be like modern TV or streaming services. And again, the reason for that is the base cost of permanent transferable magic devices. Crystal balls will cost more than TV's and economies of scale don't seem likely to bring that cost down. Your base line D&D crystal ball with no extra features costs the equivalent of $2,000,000 dollars. Only the very wealthy can afford such devices, and the are unlikely to consider them just toys for transmitting illusions to their friends. Indeed, the scholarly class of wizards that can afford such devices probably scorns the travelling illusionists and the hedge wizards making anti-fraud devices for merchants.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This comes down in large part to what you are trying to achieve. If you are going for the comedy of the Disc World or Harry Potter, then such magic as technology fare perhaps ought to be promoted by rules changes that make it reasonable. If you fear that a magitech world were magic items are just a sort of Clarketech will ruin your mythic setting then you'll probably want to tweak the rules so that their aren't Quartz Shacks selling clairvoyance to the masses if the rules would otherwise provide for it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7643446, member: 4937"] Agreed. This is controlled by the cheapest transferable permanent magic item that can be created in the setting. Suppose your cheapest permanent transferable magic item costs 2000 days wages, or $100,000 then such items might be very rare toys or baubles but they won't in fact revolutionize house work. Most families can't afford them and those that can would often prefer to employ human domestic help. Your mass produced wand of cleaning and disinfecting if it costs 40 or 80 days wages probably won't ever get mass produced, as the amount of labor that it saves (a few score hours of light cleaning) doesn't pay for the amount of labor that it costs. A few might exist as a bauble for the wealthy bachelor who preferred to be left to their own devices or the like, but you wouldn't expect an industry to exist to create them. Domestic labor would replace them better, and you have to remember that in societies before our own it was excessively rude to the point of being a flaw worthy public condemnation and shunning for the wealthy to not employ significant domestic labor and spread the wealth around. One didn't just deserve the servants owed to ones station, one also had a corresponding responsibility to employ them. Thus, a wealthy person who employs 'Unseen Servants' to do the chores might not be well liked, while the poor person he employs to the chores likely can't afford the 'Unseen Servant' to help them at the job. And again, that's assuming you can make a practical Unseen Servant powered transferable and permanent device cheaply. And keep in mind that a wand, by being spell completion, only passes the test of transferable if basically everyone in the society has magical training. And if that is the case, why buy the wand when they can cheaply do the spells themselves? This I fully agree would be a thing by the D&D rules. Every large town is likely to have one or more theaters where illusionists tell stories augmented by their magic as a normal and respected artistic tradition. Smaller towns will likely look forward to the arrival of the travelling illusionist or troupe thereof. This is however I think more likely to be like Shakespearean theater or Homeric story telling where the players don't need to complain to the audience that they can't recreate the scope of the Battle of Agincourt on the stage than it is to be like modern TV or streaming services. And again, the reason for that is the base cost of permanent transferable magic devices. Crystal balls will cost more than TV's and economies of scale don't seem likely to bring that cost down. Your base line D&D crystal ball with no extra features costs the equivalent of $2,000,000 dollars. Only the very wealthy can afford such devices, and the are unlikely to consider them just toys for transmitting illusions to their friends. Indeed, the scholarly class of wizards that can afford such devices probably scorns the travelling illusionists and the hedge wizards making anti-fraud devices for merchants. This comes down in large part to what you are trying to achieve. If you are going for the comedy of the Disc World or Harry Potter, then such magic as technology fare perhaps ought to be promoted by rules changes that make it reasonable. If you fear that a magitech world were magic items are just a sort of Clarketech will ruin your mythic setting then you'll probably want to tweak the rules so that their aren't Quartz Shacks selling clairvoyance to the masses if the rules would otherwise provide for it. [/QUOTE]
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