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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7643457" data-attributes="member: 4937">Does it?  I think you are making a huge assumption that any literate person with an Int of 9+ can become a wizard.  The rules don't actually say that.  They say that any Player Character with 9 Int and literacy can become a wizard, and any NPC which is a wizard must have 9 Int and literacy, but they don't actually say that any literate person with an Int of 9+ can become a wizard.  That's goes back to how magic works and what are your demographics.   And it's even less clear that you could decide to turn every person with Wis of 9+ into a cleric, since who gets to be a cleric doesn't seem like something you can just decide and order done.  And again, it is clear that not every person need have sorcerer blood in them unless you wanted things to work that way.Honestly, I have my game tweaked such that low level wizards barely impact warfare and certainly aren't worth the cost to upkeep them.  In some cases that comes from tweaking the rules, and in some cases tweaking the culture, but a few magic missiles or burning hands would scarcely impact a boarding action in my game - certainly no more so that a few sailors with bows and crossbows and other such weapons.  Summon Swarm maybe or fireball maybe, but then what you'd typically find in a boarding action is both sides had low level caster parity and the expectation that they'd be facing them, and sailors trained and with a duty to counter the actions of opposing spellcasters.  But even had I not tweaked the rules, magic missile and burning hands have a reasonable parity with longbows, two-handed swords and halberds.   Sleep or True Strike might be more on point choices, but I've done boarding actions as a low level caster in D&D and sleep while it certainly helped did not win out on its own.It's not at all clear one earth elemental will consistently change warfare as much as the aircraft carrier did, or that just because you wanted a bunch of tame wizards that could conjure earth elementals for you that you could order it done.   It's hard enough for a nation to field aircraft carriers just because they want one, and that's technology - transferable, repeatable, portable, etc.Could it work that way?  Sure.  If you rule that magical colleges can turn out 9th level wizards after 4-7 years of magical training, and that any reasonably intelligent young person can in fact complete such training, then you have some interesting questions to ask about how your world works and how culture and society developed.   But that's a ruling, not something in any way forced on you by the rules.</blockquote>

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