D&D 5E Why do cities in Faerun have fortified walls?

[Bupp]

With the level of magic presented in the system, the published adventures, and fiction, I have a hard time of seeing D&D as quasi-medieval.

Arthur C. Clark says “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but the inverse is also true. D&D worlds lend themselves to appearing more modern than traditionally presented.

My homebrew World of Eska reflects that. If the Fallout universe is the 1950's with future tech, Eska is the dirty 1970's with high magic.

 

[S'mon]

I confess I know little to nothing about FR. A civilization of elves lasting 10,000 years?

The Elven civilisations of the Crown Wars epoch (more like 11,500 years ago I think) are all long dead AFAICR. Mulhorand is a really old human civilisation, but it's FR's Egypt. Most places like Waterdeep are pretty young and built on ancient ruins. My FR campaign is set in Damara, which is about 300 years old.
FR seems to me a really bad example of the "ancient unchanging setting" trope. Like Greyhawk's history, it has a ton of change over normal historical type durations. Not always progress; magic seems much weaker in 1357 DR than in the era of Netheril, while technology may be more advanced.

 

[Seramus]

Oh yeah, Unnecessary Zeros is a ridiculous and hilarious fantasy trope. I just mentally take away a zero, and you still end up with a pretty impressive but much more reasonable number.

 

[Kinematics]

Fantasy domes probably quite resource heavy.

Underground the way forward against overwhelming air power / magical missiles

So is that why the Drow went underground? The strategic advantage against flying enemies when they were fighting wars with other elves, who probably had entire corps of flying magicians?

Caveat: I actually don't remember what the historical rationale for Drow living underground was, other than being chased out/cursed by the gods. Being in a war where walls were useless (both vs flying creatures, and the many magic spells that make walls useless), and having to come up with an entirely new combat/survival strategy sounds like it could be the basis for a lot of interesting stories.

 

[Rune]

because no one has in the 50 years of D&D has made a campaign world with first thought to be how the world would evolve with magic...

Except for Eberron.

And Dark Sun, of course.

 

[Rune]

The 10,000 years of history thing is indeed a tired fantasy trope (you can blame JRRT for that).

I’d be more inclined to blame Howard for that.

In Tolkien’s case, it’s just the natural byproduct of writing the linguistic history of immortal people.

 

[Horwath]

Walls save spell slots from casters so they can be used to battle siege casters.

Use mundane means to counter mundane attacks.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Doing a quick look through my copy of The Grand History of the Realms, the first real human state to arise was Imaskar, in -8350 DR (the current year in the Realms is around 1492 DR), then Calimshan in -6060 DR (although they had been ruled by genies for nearly 2000 years before that), Jhaamdath in -5800 DR, and Netheril in -3859 DR. All of those are long since gone other than Calimshan (which has had long periods of being subjugated or in long-term civil war, so its history is hardly continuous), with Imaskar falling in -2488 DR, leading to the founding of Shou Lung, Mulhorand, and Unther, which are the longest-lived political entities still in existence in the current year (although Unther wasn't around for the last century or so, and Mulhorand was under a resurrected Imaskri overlordship). And up until -3000 DR or so, the setting was still dominated by elf and dwarf civilizations, until they slowly declined and the human states began to take over...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I expect Netheril tried ...and look what happened.

Yep, they had magic dishwashing and transportation and such, as long as you were within the range of the city’s magic. The magic items didn’t function outside that, because they basically ran the mass produced magic items by using the mythillar as an arcane battery.

 

[aco175]

Walls save spell slots from casters so they can be used to battle siege casters.

Use mundane means to counter mundane attacks.