Spells and their World-Building Consequences...

[ClintACK]

Just like technology influences society, the widespread availability of low-level magic should change the way people live in D&D worlds.

The Zone of Truth is an obvious example with widespread consequences. (See: James Halperin's The Truth Machine for all the implications -- not just for criminal trials, but business and politics and personal relationships, and on and on.)


Basic Assumptions: Imagine a major city -- population ~1 million in the greater metropolitan area. Assume 20 casters (say 40% wizards, 40% clerics, 20% other) with 7th level spells, 40 with 6th, 60 with 5th, 100 with 4th, 200 with 3rd, 300 with 2nd, 2000 with 1st + cantrips. (So a total of 2,720 spell casters among a million mundanes.)


Goal: To find spells that don't just improve efficiency (like Mold Earth) but actually do things that couldn't be done without magic. And predict how these things would change the nature of the city and the way the people in it live.


Raise Dead is available to about 48 clerics in the city (and Resurrection to 8 of those). The expected death rate (assume life expectancy of 50) is 54 people per day. In principle, as long as they don't run out of 500 gp diamonds, there's no reason for anyone in the city to die young. (This is about 3 years of wages for a common laborer, but could be within reach for the middle class.)

Consequence: The city needs an unusually large supply of diamonds. Can these be magically fabricated? Harvested from an Elemental Plane? Does the city maintain a diamond mine operated by zombies -- the animated corpses of executed murderers?


Continual Flame-- used to light the streets at night. At 50 gp per Continual Flame (plus caster fees) and 1 sp per night (6 hrs of lamp oil or 10 torches) the Continual Flame pays for itself in less than two years, and can in principle last forever.

Consequence: Many of the 300 casters of 2nd-level spells are employed by the city to manufacture these -- slowly expanding their use throughout the city. Possible shortage of Ruby dust? How does the city react when vandals (thieves?) dispel the Flames? How do they keep the Flames from getting stolen?


Purify Food and Drink -- can be cast as a ritual by the 400 low-level priests, once every ten minutes for as long as they like. In principle, 400 priests taking 8-hour shifts could cast it 19k times/day, for about 10 million cubic feet of purified food and drink (70 million gallons, or a quarter of a million tons of water and heavy food). In practice, a small fraction of the junior-most priests could purify many tons of food and drink every day.

Note: Create Food and Water *cannot* be cast as a ritual. With all the capable priests casting the spell as often as possible they could only feed a few percent of the city's population, like in a siege. (Druids with Goodberry are much more effective at a lower level.)


Detect Poison and Disease -- can be cast as a ritual and lasts up to ten minutes. A pair of junior-most priests at every gate and on the docks could continuously check entrants to the city for disease. (Could also place a pair on an incoming aqueduct. :) )

Permanent Major Images and Magic Mouths could be reasonably common -- advertising storefronts or "enhancing" the homes of the wealthy.

What else can you think of?

Teleportation Circle seems like it should do something -- but it's too expensive for routine shipping... Sending and Dream for distant communication...

[uraniumrooster]

Just like technology influences society, the widespread availability of low-level magic should change the way people live in D&D worlds.

The Zone of Truth is an obvious example with widespread consequences. (See: James Halperin's The Truth Machine for all the implications -- not just for criminal trials, but business and politics and personal relationships, and on and on.)


Basic Assumptions: Imagine a major city -- population ~1 million in the greater metropolitan area. Assume 20 casters (say 40% wizards, 40% clerics, 20% other) with 7th level spells, 40 with 6th, 60 with 5th, 100 with 4th, 200 with 3rd, 300 with 2nd, 2000 with 1st + cantrips. (So a total of 2,720 spell casters among a million mundanes.)


Goal: To find spells that don't just improve efficiency (like Mold Earth) but actually do things that couldn't be done without magic. And predict how these things would change the nature of the city and the way the people in it live.


Raise Dead is available to about 48 clerics in the city (and Resurrection to 8 of those). The expected death rate (assume life expectancy of 50) is 54 people per day. In principle, as long as they don't run out of 500 gp diamonds, there's no reason for anyone in the city to die young. (This is about 3 years of wages for a common laborer, but could be within reach for the middle class.)

Consequence: The city needs an unusually large supply of diamonds. Can these be magically fabricated? Harvested from an Elemental Plane? Does the city maintain a diamond mine operated by zombies -- the animated corpses of executed murderers?


Continual Flame-- used to light the streets at night. At 50 gp per Continual Flame (plus caster fees) and 1 sp per night (6 hrs of lamp oil or 10 torches) the Continual Flame pays for itself in less than two years, and can in principle last forever.

Consequence: Many of the 300 casters of 2nd-level spells are employed by the city to manufacture these -- slowly expanding their use throughout the city. Possible shortage of Ruby dust? How does the city react when vandals (thieves?) dispel the Flames? How do they keep the Flames from getting stolen?


Purify Food and Drink -- can be cast as a ritual by the 400 low-level priests, once every ten minutes for as long as they like. In principle, 400 priests taking 8-hour shifts could cast it 19k times/day, for about 10 million cubic feet of purified food and drink (70 million gallons, or a quarter of a million tons of water and heavy food). In practice, a small fraction of the junior-most priests could purify many tons of food and drink every day.

Note: Create Food and Water *cannot* be cast as a ritual. With all the capable priests casting the spell as often as possible they could only feed a few percent of the city's population, like in a siege. (Druids with Goodberry are much more effective at a lower level.)


Detect Poison and Disease -- can be cast as a ritual and lasts up to ten minutes. A pair of junior-most priests at every gate and on the docks could continuously check entrants to the city for disease. (Could also place a pair on an incoming aqueduct. :) )

Permanent Major Images and Magic Mouths could be reasonably common -- advertising storefronts or "enhancing" the homes of the wealthy.

What else can you think of?

Teleportation Circle seems like it should do something -- but it's too expensive for routine shipping... Sending and Dream for distant communication...

Rare and expensive spell components like gems would need to be magically created somehow, to avoid the rarity (and price) steadily increasing. Either that, or the number of gold pieces is the only requirement, and the spell components gradually just decrease in size and quality. In any case, if the supply of gems was shrinking, people would be aware of that fact, and would likely keep reserves stashed away in case of a shortage. Governments and large organizations would probably have large stockpiles, and manipulating a neighboring kingdom's gem supply could be a form of economic warfare.

There would probably be a standardized unit of measure equal to 5 feet in length, since the range of every spell, and the size and shape of its effect is expressed in 5' intervals. It's also possible there would be a standardized measure for 125 cubic feet of volume (or, 1 cubic foot of whatever their unit of length is called), and the areas and volumes of circles and spheres with intervals of 5 feet. Weights would also probably be derived from this - the weight of 125' cubic feet of stone, water, various foodstuffs, etc, would probably be very well-established quantities.

Most casters would also probably develop excellent spacial reasoning, and a pretty intuitive understanding of geometry from the practice of placing their spell effects. All those junior priests casting Purify Food and Drink over and over would get really good at looking over a food store and being able to quickly judge its volume.

[RickAllison]

Secret Chest has an abominable start-up cost (5,000 GP!!!), but then is an amazing way to safeguard items. It can be a safe-deposit box for the wealthy that can be hidden in extremely small places, it is a way to remove all risk of breaking fragile valuables while transporting them, and it means a merchant can hide his most valuable items away while still having them be accessible.

Knock trivializes ordinary locks, so we would need more involved affairs to neutralize that threat.

Detect Thoughts has some very creepy, police-state uses. Read everyone in a crowd, see if anyone has committed crimes or is going to.

Animate Dead provides cheap labor. Unscrupulous, but I am sure an agreement could be made where either particularly bad criminals are judged to have lost the right to a grave, or peasants can sell their corpses as a sort of death insurance.

Just some thoughts.

[Madbox]

Assuming that magical aptitude is at least partially based off of training (so theoretically anyone could be a level 1 cleric if they could pay for an education), then Detect Poison and Disease would pretty much eliminate nobles getting murdered by Poison. If you had to be gifted in some way to cast magic, poison would still be valid for assassinations as the royal poison detector could be bribed.

Teleportation circles would make trading with foreign locations much simpler, although the circles would probably be located about a mile outside of the city walls, as they would be too much of a vulnerability otherwise. Don't want an enemy's elite troops suddenly popping up in the marketplace.

[R.Shackleford]

I think everyone should read what Tippyverse is over on the 3e forums.

Then translate that into 5e the best we can.

[Giant2005]

Do major cities in DnD actually have a million people in them?
In early human civilization, a major city would max out at about 10,000 people. It was through technological advancement that we were able to support larger cities.
I'd expect most major cities in any fantasy setting would have around 10k people too.

[Cybren]

I think everyone should read what Tippyverse is over on the 3e forums.

Then translate that into 5e the best we can.

A lot of tippyverse was predicated on resetting traps functioning as the magical version of a perpetual motion machine. Off the top of my head I don't think 5E has a systematized way of creating traps in that way

Do major cities in DnD actually have a million people in them?
In early human civilization, a major city would max out at about 10,000 people. It was through technological advancement that we were able to support larger cities.
I'd expect most major cities in any fantasy setting would have around 10k people too.

I was taking it as part of the conceit of the thread. I mean, there's no real way to determine the number of spellcasters in a given population, so we have to assume some number somewhere. I'd agree though, that a million population city would be the exception and not the norm in a pre-modern setting... unless magic allows a higher population density

EDIT: I think if you're into this sort of conjecture you might be interested in this book (https://www.amazon.com/Magical-Medieval-Society-Western-Europe/dp/0972937609). It establishes a baseline for what a medieval society looks like in an RPG friendly way

[R.Shackleford]

A lot of tippyverse was predicated on resetting traps functioning as the magical version of a perpetual motion machine. Off the top of my head I don't think 5E has a systematized way of creating traps in that way


However the concept is the same.

It takes 1 level of cleric, especially since ability scores doesn't matter, in order to cast...

Create or Destroy Water
Purify Food and Drink
Detect Poison and Disease
Cure Wounds
Healing Word

It takes 3 levels of cleric to gain

Augury
Calm Emotions
Locate Object
Protection from Poison

It takes 5 levels of cleric to gain the all powerful Create Food and Water.

Assuming that D&D races think anything like real world humans, you would have clerics running around everywhere. If the good gods don't give their power to mortals then the neutral and evil gods will (which they will be compensated for quite nicely).

It would be a law or social norm to follow a religion and take up of some cleric abilities.

You would have a huge clan/family of "farmers" each making food. At a 1 to 15 ratio (one person can feed 14 others and themselves) you are coming out ahead.

Even if you don't get 5 levels on everyone (in game a level doesn't really exist) just getting create or destroy water is a huge issue.

The number one reason for humans to fight is over resources. You just took out two huge resources even without traps. 10 gallons may not be much, but if everyone has a level of cleric... Fresh water isn't an issue. That's a 1 to 10 ratio right there.

I see wizardry and sorcery dying out real fast. Warlocks may still be around for a quick gain to power but the other two... Too much work for not enough pay off at the start or any other time. Remember, people won't know about higher level Arcane spells... or lower level ones. A deity can straight up say "yo, I can help you make water a non-issue". Warlocks are told about the power too, so I can see them being around.

After a level of cleric, everyone could go their different ways. Some staying cleric while others going paladin, fighter, and whatever. Low Wisdom and can't multiclass (which is silly for immersion, but good for game design)? Well, you can be a soldier who has a level of cleric.

So basically if you took the idea classes and real life and applied them organically and not inserting the classes into a world...

Everyone has all east one level of cleric.

Most other classes wouldn't exist to a high or moderate degree, there would be no need for them to come into existence or stay around.

Resource wars, the number one type of war, just wouldn't be a real thing. Enemy shows up to take your food and water? Ok... here this is how you get your own free food and water, leave us alone. Other wars would happen, sure, but the number one driving factor wouldn't be there.

You can still make a tippyverse type setting in 5e, you just aren't as highly attuned as the 3e version.

Side Note: In my head the reason 3e turned to 4e was not because of any deity dying or a spells car or whatever. No, the deities got mad that the world was at peace and everyone was loving the tippyverse. They made a cataclysm which resulted in the laws of nature itself to rewrite, giving us 4e, however after some time the laws of nature went back to normal. This caused some timey whimey stuff to happen that even effected the deities.

[Regitnui]

Eberron was built on the free availability of low-level spells; in fact, continual flame lanterns are specifically called out as one of the innovations of the age, being equivalent to streetlights in our reality. However, most of this magic is produced by magewrights, adepts and gleaners, weaker NPC equivalents to wizards/artificers, clerics and druids, who learn less spells. This makes the world of Eberron highly magical without leaving the player characters as one in a crowd.

The rough equivalent for a magewright and a PC wizard is a pianist and Mozart. The magewright is perfectly capable, but the PC can learn spells by reading them and can cast more spells in a day than a magewright can in a week, even creating completely new spells given time.

[Bubzors]

CLIP.

With the assumptions you made, yes a lot of that is true. But who is to say you can just be a cleric? From class descriptions and such it sounds like its an honor. Not quite rare but close to it. The God picked him for the job. Just because you worship a god all the time does not guarantee you access to spell casting.

Hell it specifically says in the phb that the gods don't grant the power to everyone, and that it's only the chosen. That's why there's the acolyte background and all. The vast majority of worshippers are just that, worshippers. They do not have any power

[R.Shackleford]

With the assumptions you made, yes a lot of that is true. But who is to say you can just be a cleric? From class descriptions and such it sounds like its an honor. Not quite rare but close to it. The God picked him for the job. Just because you worship a god all the time does not guarantee you access to spell casting.

Hell it specifically says in the phb that the gods don't grant the power to everyone, and that it's only the chosen. That's why there's the acolyte background and all. The vast majority of worshippers are just that, worshippers. They do not have any power

There is no real requirement for being a cleric or gaining access to cleric spells other than *worship deity* (same with Warlock really).

8 Wis Clerics exist.

[Naanomi]

Fabricate is the obvious choice...
Craftsmen devote years do designing their masterpieces on paper down to the last detail... Clockwork men, exquisitely articulated plate mail, 1,000 year old beer... Stuff that would take generations to make. Or you know, a few minutes to mass produce it once you've meticulously planned the thing.

Changed the whole dynamic of high quality craftsmanship into a fully mental exercise, physical aptitude (or limits) hardly matter except for very large products (which I'd expect to be made of interlocking Fabricateable parts)

[RickAllison]

There is no real requirement for being a cleric or gaining access to cleric spells other than *worship deity* (same with Warlock really).

8 Wis Clerics exist.

I think the meaning is that you assume every person is capable of it, whereas all of the fluff and mechanics of the game seem to indicate that PCs are unique and special (they are the special snowflakes of the world already). The vast majority of worshippers do not have the panache/flair/fate/whatever it is that makes PCs special to become a cleric. Some will, but the majority will not gain powers, a minority will gain the favor of a god through devotion and become Acolytes (the NPC stat block), and a particular few will become Priests.

[Slipperychicken]

Permanent Major Images and Magic Mouths could be reasonably common -- advertising storefronts or "enhancing" the homes of the wealthy.

Major image needs a 6th level slot to make it permanent. You'd need an abundance of level 11 casters to make that happen.

[ClintACK]

Do major cities in DnD actually have a million people in them?
In early human civilization, a major city would max out at about 10,000 people. It was through technological advancement that we were able to support larger cities.
I'd expect most major cities in any fantasy setting would have around 10k people too.

Totally valid. I'm assuming that magic can provide the kind of infrastructure advances that we get from technology -- clean water, transportation of food, cheap housing with more than two stories...

(Note that at its height in ancient times the city of Rome had a population over a million -- primarily because they'd solved these issues. The aqueducts brought in enough clean water from the mountains; massive sewers dumped the waste into the river which carried it out to sea; well-maintained roads brought food in from the surrounding countryside; and most of the population lived in apartment complexes that resembled those of modern cities -- shops in the ground floor and as many as six floors of apartments above.)

The water issue I feel confident about. See: Purify Food and Drink. A 1st-level Clerical *RITUAL* -- so those junior priests can cast it all day long. And it can turn seawater or sewage into pristine drinking water.

Meanwhile, the junior wizards are casting Unseen Servant as a ritual and Prestidigitation as an at will cantrip -- and then spending an hour cleaning the streets. (Neither spell requires concentration. If they use spell slots, they can have several Unseen Servants active at once while thoroughly cleaning a cubic foot of material every six seconds.)

The construction issue seems pretty solid too -- the ancient romans were doing it with fired-clay bricks. Wall of Stone and Fabricate should be superior.

It's the food issue that has me worried. I don't think it's reasonable to expect 6% of the population to become 5th-level clerics. (I was guesstimating about 160 in a city of a million -- which doesn't come close. Even if each one can cast Create Food three or four times a day, they'll only manage to feed ten thousand people. It's a drop in the bucket.)


Any ideas on how to feed a million people with the help of magic? It's possible that it's enough to just maintain good roads -- junior wizards with Mold Earth to dig drainage ditches along the sides of the road would go a long, long way. And the same spell would make short work of digging out the road itself to fill with crushed rock.

Druids and Nature Priests get Plant Growth -- which doubles the productivity of the land. Mold Earth could be used to very quickly plow large areas or to dig irrigation ditches. Weather control spells have some obvious utility.



Teleportation circles would make trading with foreign locations much simpler, although the circles would probably be located about a mile outside of the city walls, as they would be too much of a vulnerability otherwise. Don't want an enemy's elite troops suddenly popping up in the marketplace.

Alternately, you put it in a small room (to prevent large forces from entering) with defenses at least as strong as those at the city gates. Murder holes in the ceiling, a locked and barred gate...

[ClintACK]

Major image needs a 6th level slot to make it permanent. You'd need an abundance of level 11 casters to make that happen.

True. My assumptions in the first post have 40 casters of 6th-level spells and 20 casters of 7th-level and higher. At 40% arcane, that's 24 wizard and sorcerers capable of a permanent Major Image.

And once they've done it, the spell is permanent. (And if they are Illusionists, they can come back for another fee and alter the image without using another spell slot.)

If just two of those wizards make a career out of the spell, and cast it four times a week for fifty weeks a year, that's 400 new permanent Major Images in the city every year. Ten years later, it's safe to say every noble's house has some illusory bling and the high-end shopping district could resemble the Las Vegas Strip. :)

[JellyPooga]

I think the meaning is that you assume every person is capable of it, whereas all of the fluff and mechanics of the game seem to indicate that PCs are unique and special (they are the special snowflakes of the world already). The vast majority of worshippers do not have the panache/flair/fate/whatever it is that makes PCs special to become a cleric. Some will, but the majority will not gain powers, a minority will gain the favor of a god through devotion and become Acolytes (the NPC stat block), and a particular few will become Priests.

This, for me, is what breaks this thought exercise. In a city of a million I'd expect one, maybe two Player Characters. Everyone else is an NPC. That means no Class Levels, no spell lists...NPCs don't even get to roll stats or point-buy (which is why 1 in every 256 people *don't* have an 18 in a given Ability Score).

5ed, more so than (perhaps) any other edition emphasises the difference between PCs and NPCs and not every person gets to say "hmm...I think I'll be a Cleric; they get awesome training and good spells and all I've got to do is believe". It doesn't work that way.

A young boy might join the clergy, train as a priest, devote himself heart and soul to his god...and if he's not a PC, the furthest he might get is as an Acolyte (pg.342 MM).

PCs are (by default) the exception, not the norm. A GM might run a game where everyone's has PC Class Levels, but the base-line assumption is that most folks, well, don't and that has a big impact on any theory-crafting of this kind.

I personally think it excetionaly generous to assume that 20 people in a million would have the ability to cast 5th level spells, let alone higher than that. A Priest, the "spiritual leader of their community" only gets 3rd level spells; how many of them would you expect in such a city? How many superiors would he have? Not as many as the OP suggests there must be, not in my book anyway.

Even if we go with "everyone's a PC", take a look at pg.37 of the DMG; characters of level 11+ are Masters of the Realm, they're legends in their own time, the founders of Knightly Orders and Guilds; they're among the most powerful people in the kingdom, if not the known world. 60-odd such characters in one city would be like having every attendee of the last G8 (or 9 or whatever they're up to these days) summit living in Bognor Regis.

[Sigreid]

Any ideas on how to feed a million people with the help of magic? It's possible that it's enough to just maintain good roads -- junior wizards with Mold Earth to dig drainage ditches along the sides of the road would go a long, long way. And the same spell would make short work of digging out the road itself to fill with crushed rock.

Druids and Nature Priests get Plant Growth -- which doubles the productivity of the land. Mold Earth could be used to very quickly plow large areas or to dig irrigation ditches. Weather control spells have some obvious utility.




Alternately, you put it in a small room (to prevent large forces from entering) with defenses at least as strong as those at the city gates. Murder holes in the ceiling, a locked and barred gate...

With permanent teleportation circles the farm lands don't have to be limited to the area immediately around the city. Gentle Repose can be used to preserve food for very long periods of time, allowing for huge stockpiles. In the universe you envision, it's probable that someone would have at lest attempted to use gentle repose to create something like a hyper efficient refrigerator.

[Xetheral]

A lot of tippyverse was predicated on resetting traps functioning as the magical version of a perpetual motion machine. Off the top of my head I don't think 5E has a systematized way of creating traps in that way

Yeah. Tippyverse requires a particular interpretation of D&D where one can extrapolate the "rules" of the setting from the rules of the game system modeling that setting.

It's just as reasonable to assume that where the model and the setting disagree, the setting takes priority and you chalk the discrepancy up to the fact that no model can be perfect. In this case, one wouldn't use the 3.5 trap rules to model anything other than traps, even though the rules don't explicitly prevent other applications.

I prefer a compromise: I make setting decisions with an eye towards how well the system can model my creation, without necessarily going with the setting a literal reading of the rules might suggest.


Any ideas on how to feed a million people with the help of magic?

If 10% of the population are variant humans with Magic Initiate (Goodberry), you're set. No class levels required.

[Osrogue]

NPCs can take feats?

[Telok]

A young boy might join the clergy, train as a priest, devote himself heart and soul to his god...and if he's not a PC, the furthest he might get is as an Acolyte (pg.342 MM).

Ah, an Acolyte is a first level cleric. Furthermore (http://www.5esrd.com/gamemastering/monsters-foes/npc/npc-acolyte)...

Acolytes are junior members of a clergy, usually answerable to a priest. They perform a variety of functions in a temple and are granted minor spellcasting power by their deities.

Which would mean that all priests under your assumption are PCs, which has further implications on worldbuilding.

[ClintACK]

With permanent teleportation circles the farm lands don't have to be limited to the area immediately around the city. Gentle Repose can be used to preserve food for very long periods of time, allowing for huge stockpiles. In the universe you envision, it's probable that someone would have at lest attempted to use gentle repose to create something like a hyper efficient refrigerator.

If I understand the spell correctly, a "permanent" teleportation circle isn't an always-open gateway, it's just a place that any wizard (who knows the correct sigil) can use Teleportation Circle to teleport to -- opening a gateway for six seconds at the cost of a 5th level spell slot.

It's useful for things like sending couriers and ambassadors, or a noble family making their escape. Not so much for bulk transportation of goods...

Gentle Repose -- that's definitely a cool idea. I also wonder if "Purify Food" might sort-of reset the clock on spoilage, making almost-spoiled food back into perfectly fresh food.


[QUOTE=JellyPooga;21053577]This, for me, is what breaks this thought exercise. In a city of a million I'd expect one, maybe two Player Characters. Everyone else is an NPC. That means no Class Levels, no spell lists...[/spoiler]

Wait... NPCs don't formally get Class Levels, but they certainly can get spell lists. See: Acolyte and Priest, which you reference. Or do you mean they only get the spells in the Statblock and no others -- so no Acolyte can cast Purify Food and Drink ?

In a medieval society, a million people is *a lot*. The whole of the British Isles probably had about two million people a thousand years ago. Are you imagining an adventuring world in which the PCs will go their entire lives without ever meeting another spell caster? I don't get it. Doesn't this break down entirely the first time a party member dies and is replaced by another spell caster who just happens to be about the same level?

As to ratios... scaling the assumptions I made in the first post to smaller communities... the Priest in the back of the Monster Manual is a 5th-level spell caster and the leader of his temple.

I was assuming 400/million of 3rd-level spells and above. So if we imagine a much more typical "community" of 10,000 people, I'd predict about 4 spell-casters at that level. Call it two priests of competing faiths, a grumpy wizard, and a druid-hermit who comes into town every spring to bless the fields. It would be fair to call either of the priests the "leader of his temple".

Maybe I'm off by a factor of two, or even ten, but only one 5th-level "Priest" in a nation or major city of a million people? That's a *really* low-magic setting. That means there's probably no one in the world who can cast Raise Dead, until the party levels enough to do it themselves.

TL;DR -- There isn't a default setting for D&D 5e. In principle, the party wizard could be the only living arcane spell caster. Or you can go full Eberron. Think of this thread as a "what if" for a specific choice for the prevalence of magic.

[JellyPooga]

Ah, an Acolyte is a first level cleric.

No, it's not. It's an NPC. It might have similar stats to a 1st level PC Cleric, but it's not one. I know I'm arguing semantics, but the point remains that none of the stat-blocks in the NPC appendix have Class levels; the Scout isn't a Ranger, the Thug isn't a Fighter and the Priest isn't a 5th level Cleric any more than the Acolyte is a 1st level one.

As proof of my hypothesis; a 1st level Cleric has a Divine Domain. An Acolyte does not and also has 2 HD.

NPCs don't follow the same rules as PCs. I'll say it again; PCs are the exception, not the norm.

[Sigreid]

If I understand the spell correctly, a "permanent" teleportation circle isn't an always-open gateway, it's just a place that any wizard (who knows the correct sigil) can use Teleportation Circle to teleport to -- opening a gateway for six seconds at the cost of a 5th level spell slot.

It's useful for things like sending couriers and ambassadors, or a noble family making their escape. Not so much for bulk transportation of goods...



Even still, harvest isn't typically a year round activity. It could be very worth it to pay a wizard to activate the circle to bring a large wagon load of food during a few weeks of harvest, that are immediately stuck in your Gentile Repose icebox so you can sell the city fresh meat, fruits and vegetables from all over the known world year round. Combined with a druid payed to cast plant growth a couple of times a year and you have no food quantity or quality problems.

[JellyPooga]

Wait... NPCs don't formally get Class Levels, but they certainly can get spell lists. See: Acolyte and Priest, which you reference. Or do you mean they only get the spells in the Statblock and no others -- so no Acolyte can cast Purify Food and Drink ?

I'm not saying no Acolyte can cast a given spell, but it would be on the GM to create an NPC who can. There's no reason an Acolyte couldn't have Hex as one of his 1st level spells; he doesn't have a spell list because they're an artificial construction for balancing and theming the PC Classes. Nowhere in the Acolytes stat-block does it say anything about the spells he has the option of casting except for those he has prepared, because he doesn't have Class levels.


Are you imagining an adventuring world in which the PCs will go their entire lives without ever meeting another spell caster?

No, I'm imagining a world in which the PCs will only ever meet a handful of people who have the capability (whether through fate, training, will of the gods or whatever) of being a PC. This is not to say there cannot be people or creatures more powerful than them, but if they have Class levels it's because they, too, are an exception to the norm.


Maybe I'm off by a factor of two, or even ten, but only one 5th-level "Priest" in a nation or major city of a million people? That's a *really* low-magic setting.

I didn't say that ;) I said that a Priest is the leader of his spiritual community. In a city of a million souls, how many "communities" do you imagine there being, considering the polytheistic pantheon and multicultural society that D&D assumes in almost every setting? A dozen? Two dozen? More? I'd probably peg it at around the two dozen mark, with perhaps half of those with multiple high-ranking members (it is a BIG city). That gives us around about 40-50 Priests (as per the NPC stat-block) capable of casting 3rd level spells. Maybe a quarter of that again would be High Priests or whatever and be capable of casting spells of higher than 3rd level and maybe one or two that can cast spells higher than 5th level. Bear in mind thay Raise Dead, seeing as you mention it, is a 5th level spell that should probably be reserved for the highest ranking members of a given church.

Levels 11+ are for Heroes with a capital H and the abilities they have are reserved for those thay go beyond the call of duty. The High Priest in his temple has no need for the likes of Fire Storm or Earthquake; he's little more than a glorified clerk in the eyes of his deity. The adventuring Cleric, the chosen one-in-a-million, on the other hand, does have that need. It doesn't mean no NPC csn ever cast those spells, just that they're normally reserved for special cases; like PCs.


TL;DR -- There isn't a default setting for D&D 5e. In principle, the party wizard could be the only living arcane spell caster. Or you can go full Eberron. Think of this thread as a "what if" for a specific choice for the prevalence of magic.

I'd argue that there is a default setting, but that's another topic really. I can agree that settings differ and there's never a "right" answer, though. All I was saying, really, is that for me at least, the OPs distribution of spellslingers seemed over-generous for the sort of setting I'd play in.

[MrConsideration]

Allow me to dissent.

There's a lot said about the assumptions of standard D&D universes leading to a sort of magical post-scarcity society, but I think they're totally unfeasible if we're working with actual existing (demi)humans with real societies.

For the start of this, we're going to focus on the Wizard spell-casting class because it is the only one a society can endeavour to engineer more of. Clerics are chosen by gods, Sorcerors are simply born with it and Druids are broadly antithetical to the idea of a magi-tech utopia exploiting the world's resources. As for Warlocks, their relationship with their patron probably limits their ability to embark on a life of diligent public service. Even in today's economy, I wouldn't sell my soul for a cushy government job.

Assuming society starts in much the same way as our world: a slow transition to agrarian life, leading to an eventual surplus of food which allows some people to do something other than directly produce food. Such a society will eventually develop literacy for record-keeping, and after that, spellcraft. Hunger, disease, other cultures and a world populated almost entirely by hideous monsters
will slow the development of this scarcity considerably, and I think the first priority of a D&D-world settlement would be defences from what lies beyond their palisade, not supporting a parasitic class of Magi who can only cast a few spells per day anyway, most of which require gathering esoteric components. Who is going to find the bat guano and rubies? That requires a further surplus and expert knowledge - essentially a middle class. It also requires considerable travel. Travel in D&D generally necessitates rolling on a random-encounter table. Who is going to defend these people? Who is going to risk their life for bat guano?


In the earliest days of this society, any spell-caster that arrives will be essentially responsible for an entire community, and may constitute an elite in that society - like the aristocracy, or religious figures of Babylon, Sumer etc. Now, is that elite going to freely share their secrets with the masses? No - their ability to command magic is the source of their power. l would assume they would soon develop an ideology based on that premise and would be adverse to randomly giving unwashed peasants the secret to their power, especially as said unwashed peasants are utterly necessary for the community to remain fed. Any other communities ruled by Wizards will be actively competing for resources - spell-casting or otherwise - and will probably compete militarily with our original community. What elite in human history has ever willingly surrendered its advantage?

If we say that human civilization begins around 6000BC, it took until around 1700AD for their to be a large class of educated individuals with access to a majority of the world's varied resources which we could take as an analogue of this magical middle class - around the time of the real-world Industrial Revolution. There are occasionally 'resets' to areas, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, which stagnate progress towards some form of magitech utopia. Imagine how much more common such collapses would be in a world where individuals can be mightier than armies and where monsters roam the wilderness.

Plus....you become more proficient at magic by killing things if we're taking the rules of the game to an absurd conclusion. That makes all these hopeful Wizards need to go out into the wilderness, become mighty heroes who bards sing of, then retire to cast Create Food and Drink 12 times a day in a big warehouse. Not quite the epic destiny your average PC would gun for...

The necessary infrastructure, literacy and resource accumulation to fund a city of a million souls with a magical middle-class is phenomenal. Like the industrial Revolution in our world, I think there would be an eventual enormous change in socioeconomic conditions trending towards post-scarcity society. But it would be an enormous amount of effort to bring it to bear.

tl;dr medieval stasis makes perfect sense.

[Specter]

About the resurrection part...

I think it's naive to think a kingdom would care about commoners to the point of reviving them for 500gp. What would probably happen is the monarchs telling everyone they're the only ones who can be revived, because of their royal blood, and the low-class citizens would believe it and consider it taboo to talk about. Until someone (a PC) realizes it's all a lie...

[Telok]

No, it's not. It's an NPC. It might have similar stats to a 1st level PC Cleric, but it's not one. I know I'm arguing semantics, but the point remains that none of the stat-blocks in the NPC appendix have Class levels; the Scout isn't a Ranger, the Thug isn't a Fighter and the Priest isn't a 5th level Cleric any more than the Acolyte is a 1st level one.

As proof of my hypothesis; a 1st level Cleric has a Divine Domain. An Acolyte does not and also has 2 HD.

NPCs don't follow the same rules as PCs. I'll say it again; PCs are the exception, not the norm.

Right, for beating people up in PC vs. NPC combat an acolyte isn't a cleric. For casting first level cleric spells in non-combat conditions they appear to be quite on par. Since this isn't about PC vs. NPC combat an acolyte is approximately the same spellcasting resource as a first level cleric.

[Tanarii]

Basic Assumptions: Imagine a major city -- population ~1 million in the greater metropolitan area. Assume 20 casters (say 40% wizards, 40% clerics, 20% other) with 7th level spells, 40 with 6th, 60 with 5th, 100 with 4th, 200 with 3rd, 300 with 2nd, 2000 with 1st + cantrips. (So a total of 2,720 spell casters among a million mundanes.)

That seems like a prett off assumption, at least at the higher levels, to me. A caster of 6th+ leve spells is assumed to be having adventures that affect entire continents.

Assuming 1 in 1000 full time residents in a civilized area have adventuring levels. Further assume that about 1/3 of those are mundane Fighters and Thieves, and about half the rest full casters. At best, we're looking at 1/3 of the adventuring pop being full casters (Wizard, Clerics, Druids, Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks). So 1 in 3000 full casters. Further assume about 1/3 of that amount is the next highest level through level 5, and 1/10th on up.

In a pop of 1 million, we'd expect permanently resident:
1000000 people
1000 adventurers
333 full casters (cantrips, level 1 spells+)
83 with level 2+ spells
21 with level 3+ spells
1 with level 4+ spells


So anyone with level 5+ spells should be an exception hero, and probably not a full time resident since they're regularly off saving the kingdom, or even continent, from seen and unseen threats.

Obviously I'm pulling numbers out my ass, but when we're talking world building that's what it's all about, right? :smallsmile:

[Arial Black]

Allow me to dissent.

There's a lot said about the assumptions of standard D&D universes leading to a sort of magical post-scarcity society, but I think they're totally unfeasible if we're working with actual existing (demi)humans with real societies.

For the start of this, we're going to focus on the Wizard spell-casting class because it is the only one a society can endeavour to engineer more of. Clerics are chosen by gods, Sorcerors are simply born with it and Druids are broadly antithetical to the idea of a magi-tech utopia exploiting the world's resources. As for Warlocks, their relationship with their patron probably limits their ability to embark on a life of diligent public service. Even in today's economy, I wouldn't sell my soul for a cushy government job.

Assuming society starts in much the same way as our world: a slow transition to agrarian life, leading to an eventual surplus of food which allows some people to do something other than directly produce food. Such a society will eventually develop literacy for record-keeping, and after that, spellcraft. Hunger, disease, other cultures and a world populated almost entirely by hideous monsters
will slow the development of this scarcity considerably, and I think the first priority of a D&D-world settlement would be defences from what lies beyond their palisade, not supporting a parasitic class of Magi who can only cast a few spells per day anyway, most of which require gathering esoteric components. Who is going to find the bat guano and rubies? That requires a further surplus and expert knowledge - essentially a middle class. It also requires considerable travel. Travel in D&D generally necessitates rolling on a random-encounter table. Who is going to defend these people? Who is going to risk their life for bat guano?


In the earliest days of this society, any spell-caster that arrives will be essentially responsible for an entire community, and may constitute an elite in that society - like the aristocracy, or religious figures of Babylon, Sumer etc. Now, is that elite going to freely share their secrets with the masses? No - their ability to command magic is the source of their power. l would assume they would soon develop an ideology based on that premise and would be adverse to randomly giving unwashed peasants the secret to their power, especially as said unwashed peasants are utterly necessary for the community to remain fed. Any other communities ruled by Wizards will be actively competing for resources - spell-casting or otherwise - and will probably compete militarily with our original community. What elite in human history has ever willingly surrendered its advantage?

If we say that human civilization begins around 6000BC, it took until around 1700AD for their to be a large class of educated individuals with access to a majority of the world's varied resources which we could take as an analogue of this magical middle class - around the time of the real-world Industrial Revolution. There are occasionally 'resets' to areas, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, which stagnate progress towards some form of magitech utopia. Imagine how much more common such collapses would be in a world where individuals can be mightier than armies and where monsters roam the wilderness.

Plus....you become more proficient at magic by killing things if we're taking the rules of the game to an absurd conclusion. That makes all these hopeful Wizards need to go out into the wilderness, become mighty heroes who bards sing of, then retire to cast Create Food and Drink 12 times a day in a big warehouse. Not quite the epic destiny your average PC would gun for...

The necessary infrastructure, literacy and resource accumulation to fund a city of a million souls with a magical middle-class is phenomenal. Like the industrial Revolution in our world, I think there would be an eventual enormous change in socioeconomic conditions trending towards post-scarcity society. But it would be an enormous amount of effort to bring it to bear.

tl;dr medieval stasis makes perfect sense.

You are right....and so is the OP.

Imagine you could step outside time and view history all at once, looking like a river. Near the beginning of that river, and probably to well over half way, then our magical D&D world still resembles our medieval world with no significant 'magic=technology'.

However, just like in our world, eventually society evolves and magic does start to work like our tech. The OP's vision does come true, eventually.

The main barrier to populations of cities in our world was disease. When tea drinking reached Britain it allowed cities to reach and surpass the million mark, because tea has many medicinal properties. In our D&D world, magic does this job and cities would get bigger.

There is no conflict here. Each DM can choose whether he sets his adventures during the times when society resemble the middle ages, or to set them when magic = technology.

I think that the OP's idea is a cool and fascinating world in which to set adventures, and thinking things through like that is very rewarding.

[RickAllison]

I would like to say that rather than having an additive system of power like the OP suggested, it is more likely exponential. So out of a million (and these are just preliminary numbers, and I would like to give credit to S. John Ross and his article "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" for its numbers):

One clergyman per 40 people (these would be Acolytes, guys with 1st-level spells): 25,000

One priest per 40 clergymen (Priest, as you would guess, 3rd-leve spells): 625

One bishop per 40 priests (following the pattern as it wasn't covered in the article, 5th-level spells): 16/15.625

One archbishop per 40 bishops (7th-level): 0.39, or maybe 1

One paragon of the church, the sort who comes along very rarely in a faith's history, per 40 archbishops (9th-level spells): 0.01, functionally 0.

Note that these numbers will likely be distributed across a variety of faiths. I will do some more analysis using Ross's number later, but this gives what is probably a more accurate baseline for a given fantasy world (barring places like Eberron where every other person is doing magic-worthy stuff).

[RickAllison]

Some more calculations from Ross's article! Together with the clergy, these are going to be potential PCs based on backgrounds.

One city guardsman per 150 people: About 6700

One noble house per 200 people (note that this ranges from kings and dukes down to knights and gentlemen, basically everyone who owned land): 5000

One magic shop per 2800 people (as in supplies for wizards to do their spells, not magic items): 357.

One inn per 2000 people: this means we have 500 guaranteed high-level adventurers that have retired.

[ClintACK]

Wow. Lots to cover. Points to come: 1 Million! -- Yeah, I was wrong -- NPCs vs PCs -- The Archmage -- It's all about the Sh!t.

1) 1 Million!

The largest city contemplated in the DMG has 25k people. A million people isn't just any city -- it's Rome in 150 AD at the height of the Empire, it's Paris or London in 1800 -- it's the center of the world. The most powerful people in the world (those who haven't carved out their own kingdoms) are here.

Or else it's a typical city in the 20th century -- meaning it's only that size *because* of magic or technology that makes that possible.

2) I was definitely too generous with the higher-level guys.
All I was saying, really, is that for me at least, the OPs distribution of spellslingers seemed over-generous for the sort of setting I'd play in.

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm not sure I was wrong at the 1st level part -- but even for a city of a million, 20 casters with 7th level spells seems too high.

But this...


In a pop of 1 million, we'd expect permanently resident:
1000000 people
1000 adventurers
333 full casters (cantrips, level 1 spells+)
83 with level 2+ spells
21 with level 3+ spells
1 with level 4+ spells

... seems too low. (see: 1 Million! above and Archmage below)


Obviously I'm pulling numbers out my ass, but when we're talking world building that's what it's all about, right? :smallsmile:

Oh, me too. Exactly.


I would like to say that rather than having an additive system of power like the OP suggested, it is more likely exponential. So out of a million (and these are just preliminary numbers, and I would like to give credit to S. John Ross and his article "Medieval Demographics Made Easy" for its numbers):

One clergyman per 40 people (these would be Acolytes, guys with 1st-level spells): 25,000

One priest per 40 clergymen (Priest, as you would guess, 3rd-leve spells): 625

One bishop per 40 priests (following the pattern as it wasn't covered in the article, 5th-level spells): 16/15.625

One archbishop per 40 bishops (7th-level): 0.39, or maybe 1

One paragon of the church, the sort who comes along very rarely in a faith's history, per 40 archbishops (9th-level spells): 0.01, functionally 0.


Honestly, this looks closer to right -- and fits better with my gut sense that 5th level spells are having a *much* smaller impact on the world than cantrips and 1st level spells.

I might go with 1 Acolyte per 200 people and then 1 per 20 for each jump... That would be... 5k (1st level spells), 250 (3rd level spells), 12 (5th level spells), 1 (7th level spells). So the high priest of most faiths, and the most respected wizards are 9th and 10th level. And there are a *bunch* of cantrips and 1st-level spells available.

Give me a hundred Acolytes with Purify Food and Drink and a hundred Apprentices with Mold Earth and I think I can pull our city out of the dark ages. :)

3) NPCs vs PCs.


No, it's not. It's an NPC. It might have similar stats to a 1st level PC Cleric, but it's not one.
I know I'm arguing semantics, but the point remains that none of the stat-blocks in the NPC appendix have Class levels; the Scout isn't a Ranger, the Thug isn't a Fighter and the Priest isn't a 5th level Cleric any more than the Acolyte is a 1st level one.

As proof of my hypothesis; a 1st level Cleric has a Divine Domain. An Acolyte does not and also has 2 HD.NPCs don't follow the same rules as PCs. I'll say it again; PCs are the exception, not the norm.

I think you're mistaking the map for the road.

The simplified rules on NPCs are there for DM convenience. The idea is that the NPCs really are fully formed individuals with backgrounds and classes and skills and such -- but it's a waste of time to generate the whole level progression of a guy who is just there to brew healing potions for the party to buy. Much better to spend your time giving him a couple of memorable quirks and a funny accent.

NPCs *absolutely* can have PC levels -- none of the Statblocks provided *do* because there's no need to provide examples of PCs for DMs. The entire PHB is about creating PC-type characters.


When you give an NPC game statistics, you have three main options: giving the NPC only the few statistics it needs, give the NPC a monster stat block, or give the NPC a class and levels.


4) The Archmage

The Monster Manual includes, among the NPC stat blocks in the back, "Archmage" -- an 18th level arcane spell caster similar to a high level wizard. (Also "Mage" -- similar to a 9th level wizard.)

Mentioned only to support: the designers of D&D were clearly envisioning a world in which high-level NPC spellcasters exist. (Of course, if the Forgotten Realms is the default setting, these Archmagi seem to grow like weeds... but that's a different conversation.)


5) Sanitation, Sanitation, Sanitation.



The main barrier to populations of cities in our world was disease. When tea drinking reached Britain it allowed cities to reach and surpass the million mark, because tea has many medicinal properties. In our D&D world, magic does this job and cities would get bigger.

I'd argue that the most important medicinal property of tea is that you boil the water. :)

But I totally agree -- that's why I was so excited to notice that Purify Food and Drink is a 1st level spell -- and a ritual. So a single Acolyte or 1st-level Cleric with access to that spell can turn about 4000 gallons of sewage or seawater into pure, clean, disease-free water every ten minutes for as long as he can stay awake. Per D&D rules in Create Food and Water, that's enough water to sustain 2000 people for a day -- and he does it repeatably in ten minutes.

So just one Acolyte can provide clean water for almost a hundred thousand people if he works eight hours a day at it. Just ten Acolytes (or 1st-level Clerics) can fully supply our hypothetical metropolis with clean water, as well as completely disposing of the entire city's sewage.

Ten acolytes -- one million people served. Holy crap indeed. (Sorry.)

[Regitnui]

Does purify food and drink turn brine drinkable? Because you could rule it as cleaning out impurities; leaving you with pure seawater.

Also I'm pretty sure that spell would have no effect on sewage. Whatever's in sewage, it can't be described as food or drink. Water, sure, but that's only after you've gotten rid of the rest of the crud in it. It's like casting shape water to affect blood. Yeah, there's water in the substance, but it's still not within the spell.

[Ashrym]

Basic Assumptions: Imagine a major city -- population ~1 million in the greater metropolitan area. Assume 20 casters (say 40% wizards, 40% clerics, 20% other) with 7th level spells, 40 with 6th, 60 with 5th, 100 with 4th, 200 with 3rd, 300 with 2nd, 2000 with 1st + cantrips. (So a total of 2,720 spell casters among a million mundanes.)

That's an interesting assumption. I don't agree with it, but it's interesting. Page 23 of the DMG already covers the approach to magic, including raising the dead and how common it might be.

This is an example of what the PHB states about clerics:


Not every acolyte or officiant at a temple or shrine is a cleric. Some priests are called to a simple life of temple service, carrying out their gods’ will through prayer and sacrifice, not by magic and strength of arms. In some cities, priesthood amounts to a political office, viewed as a stepping stone to higher positions of authority and involving no communion with a god at all. True clerics are rare in most hierarchies.

We can see similar entries regarding other spell casters as well. Not all scholars are wizards and not all minstrels are bards. Player characters have the option of becoming player character because they are player characters. NPC's are a rare or as common as a DM chooses to populate them but not all NPC's are or should carry class levels. The acolyte background (not the npc) is what we see more of for a trained priest and could just as easily be a more common concept like temple soldiers who are all 1st level fighters.

Page 89 of the DMG goes into more details on NPC's, and page 92 shows followers as rather limited in number when applying class levels. Most NPC's fall under the category of "extras" from the DMG.

The DMG also states villages are up to 1000 people, towns are up to 6000 people, and cities are normally up to 25000 people. That's a far cry from 1000000 people, which is a fair size even for modern cities.


People who are able to cast spells don’t fall into the category of ordinary hirelings. It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someone who can cast it and the more it costs.

Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components). Finding someone able and willing to cast a higher-level spell might involve traveling to a large city, perhaps one with a university or prominent temple. Once found, the spellcaster might ask for a service instead of payment—the kind of service that only adventurers can provide, such as retrieving a rare item from a dangerous locale or traversing a monster- infested wilderness to deliver something important to a distant settlement.

That indicates it's possible to find someone capable of the magic, but we're looking at a month's pay for skilled labor and nearly a year's pay for standard labor just for a low level spell. Not only do we not have the evidence of the numbers of casters from your assumptions, we don't have the income with the commoners to pay for the services mentioned. A coach cab is 3cp per mile. How much do you really think that cabbie is making?

We also have to consider that superstition and fear tend to surround magic, and it's taboo or even illegal to cast spells in some places.

Most people are just commoners, hence the name. Where did you pull those percentages you used from?

[tsotate]

Who is going to risk their life for bat guano?

There was a period in real life of several wars over bird guano, which left many Pacific islands pretty much destroyed. So probably more people than you'd think.

[JellyPooga]

3) NPCs vs PCs.

The simplified rules on NPCs are there for DM convenience. The idea is that the NPCs really are fully formed individuals with backgrounds and classes and skills and such -- but it's a waste of time to generate the whole level progression of a guy who is just there to brew healing potions for the party to buy. Much better to spend your time giving him a couple of memorable quirks and a funny accent.

NPCs *absolutely* can have PC levels -- none of the Statblocks provided *do* because there's no need to provide examples of PCs for DMs. The entire PHB is about creating PC-type characters.

I don't deny that NPCs can have Class Levels, I was only responding to the assertion that the Acolyte NPC was a 1st level Cleric (or even a 2nd level one), which ot clearly is not. As Ashrym points out, not every priest, acolyte or church functionary need be a spellcaster at all.

As demonstrated by many of the NPC statblocks, the rules for NPCs are not the same as for PCs; they're what the GM wants them to be. His only considerarion is whether an encounter the players have with them is balanced for what he has in mind. Class levels can be used wholesale or just as a guideline. A 2HD Acolyte can call down a Firestorm 1/day if you really want. This in no way impinges on the background and personality of an NPC; as you say, only the abilities that character will use actually matter.

What I guess I'm saying is that you cannot make the same assumptions about NPCs that you can about PCs. Just because every Varient Human *can* grab Magic Initiate for Goodberry, according to the rules, doesn't mean they *do* or *should* in a given setting. The likelihood should probably be quite low, in fact.

The same applies to any theory crafting of this sort. Taking the assumption that every low-level functionary of a church has access to Purify Food/Drink is not something I think we should take as a given.

[Regitnui]

There was a period in real life of several wars over bird guano, which left many Pacific islands pretty much destroyed. So probably more people than you'd think.

This was in the modern industrial age though, wasn't it? It's a bit beyond our Medieval Stasis and even beyond Eberron's Magipunk Renaissance. Spelljammer might handle that better, but it's still a little further on in our timeline than the discussion strictly allows.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

This was in the modern industrial age though, wasn't it? It's a bit beyond our Medieval Stasis and even beyond Eberron's Magipunk Renaissance. Spelljammer might handle that better, but it's still a little further on in our timeline than the discussion strictly allows.

Not really. If Fireball exists, suddenly Bat Guano is important enough to fight wars over, because one guy with Fireball can massacre low-level soldiers and every army will want to either possess that power or deny it to other.

[Arial Black]

The OP isn't saying that because D&D magic works then the world must be like our modern world but magic = technology, and you're playing wrong if it isn't!

No, he's saying that this futuristic D&D world is perfectly feasible, and therefore a valid choice of game world for D&D adventures. Valid, and fascinating.

If you want to play in a D&D world where magic has gone this far, then thinking through exactly how the D&D spells affect the world is part of the world-building process and help's create an internally consistent world for your players to explore through the adventures of their characters.

Saying that it is also possible that a D&D world might not be like that doesn't affect the OP's idea in any way. You are still free to play in middle-ages type D&D worlds and no-one is going to say you are wrong to do so. In real life steam engines and clockwork mechanisms had been created 2000 and more years ago. Each individual invention that contributed to the early industrial revolution could easily have been invented 1000 years prior; it just so happened that they either weren't, or that the infrastructure required to turn them from curiosities into part of an industrial revolution had not evolved yet.

This is probably the situation in most D&D worlds; the situation isn't right for the 'Magical Revolution' to have occurred....yet!

One of the main factors that allowed the industrial revolution to actually take place when and where it did was, interestingly, gentlemen's clubs! In these member's only clubs, the aristocracy regularly rubbed shoulders with the nouveaux riches for the first time. This allowed the dissemination of ideas that would normally be kept restricted to a privileged few, allowing the exponential spread of these ideas with the financial clout to make them change the country.

In most D&D worlds then this hasn't happened. Wizards are a secretive bunch who don't like sharing their power. Common sense should dictate that wizards should meet regularly and allow each other to copy their spells, with the end result that every wizard knows more spells. But they don't. Why? Human nature: jealousy, the desire to stay one step ahead of competitors, that kind of thing. But one day they'll get a union or something and realise their shared potential is greater than the sum of it's parts, and then the conditions for the OP's Magical Revolution are right!

Vive la revolution! Casters of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your sewage!

[Cybren]

Not really. If Fireball exists, suddenly Bat Guano is important enough to fight wars over, because one guy with Fireball can massacre low-level soldiers and every army will want to either possess that power or deny it to other.

a) you can have a huge supply train filled with mundane spellcasting components of various kinds
b) you can give all your casters a spellcasting focus + have a store of extra laying around just in case
you are a logistics officer outfitting an army, which would you choose?

[Ashrym]

Not really. If Fireball exists, suddenly Bat Guano is important enough to fight wars over, because one guy with Fireball can massacre low-level soldiers and every army will want to either possess that power or deny it to other.

Why would that be needed when siege equipment does more damage with more range?

A fireball can massacre low level soldiers in a 20 ft radius, which does little against the large numbers on the scale of a military campaign over the area the troops cover. They would have to be packed like sardines in a tight formation with most of those soldiers inside the outer ring (why?) to get 42 soldiers. There's no reason for all those soldiers to be hiding in a ring of other soldiers at all, and if we're going with the prevalence of magic then they all know enough to spread out. A fireball is lucky to take out even half that even in a tight formation with 8 with shields in front of 8 archers (the archers use the shield bearers for cover) while longbows have much better range than fireballs.

One of the key differences here is the amount of training required. Training someone capable of manipulating magic to a level capable of casting a fireball takes longer and requires more skilled people than training people in how to wear armor or shoot a bow. Those 8 archers would also be taking out regular soldiers fairly quickly even without the fireball so the level of training becomes much less necessary. Especially when the 5th level wizard casting a fireball is likely to die to the arrows or an assassin or an assault in the night and lose that investment anyway.

Between tactical assaults, assassination, numbers of cheap weapons from soldiers that don't require as much training, and siege equipment the fireball example doesn't carry so much weight from a resource management perspective. The typical 9th level mage used from the NPC's can do some damage, but if this was the norm (as suggested) the most likely thing to happen would assault teams attacking training facilities before potential candidate would ever become 9th level mages. There's no reason we would not have as many 9th level assassins out there as 9th level wizards or whatnot and the assassins would be more effective in infiltrating the leadership ranks without even needing to go to battle.

Even if the everyone was using magic instead, then why are the soldiers even there? Why a percentage of the population learn magic instead of the entire population? If magic were to be the way to go, then all of the armies would be nothing but spell casters, no?

The magic option seems far too over-emphasized. Especially the part where it's argued that anyone can qualify to be a 1st level spell caster but arbitrarily decided that not everyone becomes a 1st level spell caster even though spell casting is presented as the best option. It's a case of contrivance trying to demonstrate a point that doesn't make sense in the long run. ;-)

[Tanarii]

One clergyman per 40 people (these would be Acolytes, guys with 1st-level spells): 25,000There's no particular reason to assume that clergymen have the spellcasting capabilities of a level 1 Cleric.

[Cybren]

There's no particular reason to assume that clergymen have the spellcasting capabilities of a level 1 Cleric.

I mean, there's no reason to assume anything, but if you're conjecturing as to the worldbuilding consequences of certain concepts, you need to establish parameters. I don't think it's wrong to assume they have the acolyte (or a similar) statblock, but i don't think it's wrong that they don't have anything at all. What's important is being clear in the paramaters up front, and not claiming it as an inevitable conclusion of the D&D genre assumptions

[RickAllison]

I mean, there's no reason to assume anything, but if you're conjecturing as to the worldbuilding consequences of certain concepts, you need to establish parameters. I don't think it's wrong to assume they have the acolyte (or a similar) statblock, but i don't think it's wrong that they don't have anything at all. What's important is being clear in the paramaters up front, and not claiming it as an inevitable conclusion of the D&D genre assumptions

Indeed, that is why I gave my assumptions with my numbers. That way people can tweak my assumptions and see how that compares.

[Tanarii]

I mean, there's no reason to assume anything, but if you're conjecturing as to the worldbuilding consequences of certain concepts, you need to establish parameters. I don't think it's wrong to assume they have the acolyte (or a similar) statblock, but i don't think it's wrong that they don't have anything at all. What's important is being clear in the paramaters up front, and not claiming it as an inevitable conclusion of the D&D genre assumptions


Indeed, that is why I gave my assumptions with my numbers. That way people can tweak my assumptions and see how that compares.

Fair enough and agreed.

After all, I made the assumption that about 1 in 1000 of a civilized area are the equivalent of PC-level capabilities, as opposed to just being what used to be 0-level normal men / commoner / non-leveled types. That's always been my default assumption for campaign worlds. Along with the assumption that in a dangerous borderland / frontier /wilderness area, it's actually closer to 1 in 100 or even higher. (And that 'commoners' are just generally tougher in such areas.)

Of course, civilized areas have much higher population that frontier areas, quite likely far more than 10x as much. So they'll have higher absolute numbers of PC-power-level equivalents.

[RickAllison]

Fair enough and agreed.

After all, I made the assumption that about 1 in 1000 of a civilized area are the equivalent of PC-level capabilities, as opposed to just being what used to be 0-level normal men / commoner / non-leveled types. That's always been my default assumption for campaign worlds. Along with the assumption that in a dangerous borderland / frontier /wilderness area, it's actually closer to 1 in 100 or even higher. (And that 'commoners' are just generally tougher in such areas.)

Of course, civilized areas have much higher population that frontier areas, quite likely far more than 10x as much. So they'll have higher absolute numbers of PC-power-level equivalents.

For a sense of how I drew my numbers, I took Ross's estimates which were created off tax reports from Medieval-Renaissance Paris and then rattled off approximately how many might be PC-possible at a given level. There may be more than 17,000 clergymen, might be less. They could all be PCs or powered NPCs, or none of them could be.

My guess is that far less than 1 in 1000 are of PC power levels, but there is likely a healthy middle class of people who have neither high power or potential for growth, but have skills or abilities elevating them beyond commoners (the blacksmith with good Strength and the ability to see the weaknesses both in weapons and armor, but also people, just as an example). This middle class will compose the majority of NPCs who are worth interacting with, but not major enough to factor into the plot.

[Tanarii]

My guess is that far less than 1 in 1000 are of PC power levels, but there is likely a healthy middle class of people who have neither high power or potential for growth, but have skills or abilities elevating them beyond commoners (the blacksmith with good Strength and the ability to see the weaknesses both in weapons and armor, but also people, just as an example). This middle class will compose the majority of NPCs who are worth interacting with, but not major enough to factor into the plot.
Which is why I hesitated to use the term commoners, and emphasized PC power levels. I'm used to using the term 'Normal Man' (from oD&D) and 'commoner' more or less interchangeably. Basically, any non-PC-power level equivalent. Except in 3e of course, where they were and got levels, just not as good ones as PCs.

[JackPhoenix]

Not really. If Fireball exists, suddenly Bat Guano is important enough to fight wars over, because one guy with Fireball can massacre low-level soldiers and every army will want to either possess that power or deny it to other.

Except the guys who can cast Fireball are rare and can't be mass-produced, unlike guns that can be given to any conscripted peasant. Hell, it's not even consumed, so one ball of batsh*t could last the wizard his whole life (which is a hilarious thought), or it could be replaced by a arcane focus, like 5gp piece of wood (that could also be used as a focus for other spells)

[Sigreid]

Except the guys who can cast Fireball are rare and can't be mass-produced, unlike guns that can be given to any conscripted peasant. Hell, it's not even consumed, so one ball of batsh*t could last the wizard his whole life (which is a hilarious thought), or it could be replaced by a arcane focus, like 5gp piece of wood (that could also be used as a focus for other spells)

"This is my ball of bat crap. There are many like it but this one is mine! Take care of your ball of bat crap and it'll take care of you!"

[RickAllison]

"This is my ball of bat crap. There are many like it but this one is mine! Take care of your ball of bat crap and it'll take care of you!"

"And lo, he did take care of his ball of bat crap. For many years, it was an ally in times of crisis, a conversation piece in times of friendship, and a comfort in his times of sadness. However, one day he found himself trapped in an anti-magic field, awaiting execution. T'was then he did bring forth his flint and tinder, placed his loyal ball of bat crap within the cage housing the source of the field, peeled back a hidden fuse, and lit it. His guano served him one last time, freeing him from his prison. He escaped that day, but never used Fireball again in grief over his fallen companion..."

[Regitnui]

"This is my ball of bat crap. There are many like it but this one is mine! Take care of your ball of bat crap and it'll take care of you!"

"You EuthAnized your Ball of Bat Crap FaSter than aNy subject on Record. ConGratUlations, <subject name here>."

[Vogonjeltz]

Just like technology influences society, the widespread availability of low-level magic should change the way people live in D&D worlds.

I'd imagine that anything requiring expensive components would almost never get used, or only be employed by the casters themselves or a well paying client, of which there might be fewer than there are actual spellcasters.

Raise Dead for example would probably be available to only the most elite members of the society.

Although it's theoretically possible for a common laborer to save all their income, in practice that is beyond unlikely. There would be too many other probable costs, every single year family members are likely to get sick, or suffer injuries that must be cured or result in a loss of income.

And if the supply of 500gp diamonds is limited that would naturally lead to hording by the most wealthy personas. Presumably this level of demand would spike the asking price well above the base value of the gems, especially if anyone and everyone is desperate to acquire them, just in case. Assuming of course that a friend is actually able to get them to a priest to be brought back to life and they didn't lose the diamond/have it stolen/there are some in supply that can even be purchased at the moment it's needed.

Continual flame I'd say is probably prohibitively expensive (in terms of components needed) such that although a particular organization might create them (lighting the palace, or a big library), I doubt anyone would expend that much in resources to light an entire city. Wood is far more common than rubies, and although it's less economically efficient it's far more practical to continue to use torches or lanterns.

As you say, no one is likely to steal a torch or lantern...but a continual flame? That'll fetch big money on the black market of stolen magical effects! Any thieves guild worth its salt would be pawning those left right and center.

Something to remember is that most priests aren't clerics, only a chosen few. The Clerics represent the selected champions of the deities, not just anyone who happens to worship them. I doubt their time would generally be best served standing around doing water purification (more to the point, if the city doesn't have a clean water source, it would never have reached city size proportions to begin with).

I'd anticipate alot of advertising from magic mouth though.


Rare and expensive spell components like gems would need to be magically created somehow,

The crux of the problem being, there is no how that I'm aware of. Everything that creates something rarish (except Wish) outright states it can't be used for a spell component.


Assuming that magical aptitude is at least partially based off of training

Not a safe assumption, the PHB notes that being a Cleric for example isn't a trained thing, nor even necessarily a member of the religion that worships their deity. Deities might simply choose a particular person to be their Cleric, even against the Clerics wishes!

A wizard is pretty much the only spellcasting class that results from studying.


It would be a law or social norm to follow a religion and take up of some cleric abilities.

The PHB seems to indicate it doesn't work like that. Like, a character might become a priest, but that doesn't make them a Cleric.


Even still, harvest isn't typically a year round activity. It could be very worth it to pay a wizard to activate the circle to bring a large wagon load of food during a few weeks of harvest, that are immediately stuck in your Gentile Repose icebox so you can sell the city fresh meat, fruits and vegetables from all over the known world year round. Combined with a druid payed to cast plant growth a couple of times a year and you have no food quantity or quality problems.

It would be one way of safeguarding the food supply of a city, or enabling a city in an otherwise more inhospitable location.

i.e. The farmlands are in a valley surrounded on all sides by high mountains with no normal means of entry. Access is possible only by teleportation circle.

The city is in the wintery north where the grounds are frozen 9 months out of the year. Every day shipments are scheduled to be sent. Presumably some high level Wizards could have lucrative contracts with the city authorities to move the goods as needed.


tl;dr medieval stasis makes perfect sense.

I think that summed it up quite nicely!


Not really. If Fireball exists, suddenly Bat Guano is important enough to fight wars over, because one guy with Fireball can massacre low-level soldiers and every army will want to either possess that power or deny it to other.

I'd imagine Wizard schools would seek to cultivate their own supplies (i.e. create a bat cave where guano can be harvested on a regular basis for free) to avoid such Imperial entanglements.

[Tanarii]

A wizard is pretty much the only spellcasting class that results from studying.And Warlocks. That's not the exclusive source of their power, of course. But being seekers who study of eldritch knowledge is part of the source of their power, per fluff.

[Vogonjeltz]

And Warlocks. That's not the exclusive source of their power, of course. But being seekers who study of eldritch knowledge is part of the source of their power, per fluff.

Warlocks aren't about study though, they make deals and learn secrets of the universe in doing so. That contrasts with the Wizard who has no shortcuts.

[Tanarii]

Warlocks aren't about study though, they make deals and learn secrets of the universe in doing so. That contrasts with the Wizard who has no shortcuts.I disagree. The fluff in the PHB strongly implies they are about studying to gain knowledge. Which certainly explains why they are the only PHB class that gets access to all 5 Int skills. In fact, the only skills they get access to are Lore / Int skills, and two kinds of speaking skills (fooling via Deception or browbeating via Intimidation). Edit: I agree they do make deals to gain access to forbidden power. That's also part of what they are.

[RickAllison]

I think the most effective way to generate "more" gem value is Fabricate with gem-cutting proficiency. Sure they have only so many diamonds, but he can create more valuable cuttings out of them so they ar more efficient.

[Sigreid]

To some extent it depends on what the casters of your world are like personality wise. Basically, a few levels in the cost of trying to force a competent caster to do anything starts to rapidly exceed the value of anything you could make him/her do.

[Cybren]

Raise Dead for example would probably be available to only the most elite members of the society.

Urbis (http://urbis.wikidot.com/), originally developed as 4E setting, but later updated for pathfinder, has that as one of its assumptions. Wealthy people buy insurance from organizations that at varying packages use various divination and rez spells to bring their clients back from the dead. Actually, a lot of Urbis was originally exploring how 4E D&D system assumptions might influence a world, so I imagine the pathfinder updates do the same.

[Sigreid]

Urbis (http://urbis.wikidot.com/), originally developed as 4E setting, but later updated for pathfinder, has that as one of its assumptions. Wealthy people buy insurance from organizations that at varying packages use various divination and rez spells to bring their clients back from the dead. Actually, a lot of Urbis was originally exploring how 4E D&D system assumptions might influence a world, so I imagine the pathfinder updates do the same.

Sounds like the premium package from DocWagon in Shadowrun.

[uraniumrooster]

As you say, no one is likely to steal a torch or lantern...but a continual flame? That'll fetch big money on the black market of stolen magical effects! Any thieves guild worth its salt would be pawning those left right and center.

Possibly. Although, if they were treated as a "public utility" by the local municipality and became as common in public areas as streetlights are today, who would want or need to buy them? And at that point, it might not be worth the risk of getting caught for the relatively low return. I guess that boils down to the demographics of how many casters a city has willing and able to cast continual flame, and how much money the local authorities are willing to invest on public lighting.


Something to remember is that most priests aren't clerics, only a chosen few. The Clerics represent the selected champions of the deities, not just anyone who happens to worship them. I doubt their time would generally be best served standing around doing water purification (more to the point, if the city doesn't have a clean water source, it would never have reached city size proportions to begin with).

This is an interesting point. I think it would depend on the deity. On one hand, a benevolent Life deity might very well send their acolytes out to purify food/water sources to reduce the rate of illness among the local populace. Famine and disease were two huge contributors to the mortality rate in the middle ages, and divine magic would do a lot to cut back on that. On the other hand, there would be malicious deities that might encourage their acolytes to do the opposite, poisoning wells and spreading diseases.

Beyond that, the fact that there are many deities that are all demonstrably real would lead to a pretty dramatic change in the political structure of a D&D world. Historically, monarchies got their authority by consent of the church via the Divine Right of Kings (or various other forms of the same idea - Pharoahs in Egypt, the Mandate of Heaven in Asia, Tlahtohcayotletc in the Aztec empire, etc). Essentially, those with the strongest military or political claim got backed by the church as being chosen to rule by the God(s), but it was all just taken on faith.

If the gods were demonstrably real and their will could actually be known, the church could take more direct control to begin with, and society would have evolved quite differently. Importantly, the gods in D&D aren't just real, but are also in conflict with one other. I think it would be likely to see a lot more direct theocracies, with spiritual rewards promised to successful secular leaders, but no actual crowns. Churches devoted to various similarly-aligned deities & pantheons would likely come to control nations in an ongoing struggle to convert and combat those devoted to their rival deities.

Many priests (not necessarily Clerics) would serve as administrators and bureaucrats, running the city/county/nation/etc. Working your way up the priesthood would be a lot like working your way up a government job. Those who were able to cast spells would probably get fast-tracked, as the favored few chosen by their deity.


I'd anticipate alot of advertising from magic mouth though.

Yep. It could be used to issue public announcements/decrees, and spread news and propaganda too. I could see a nation controlled by Bane's priesthood being very Big Brothery.


The crux of the problem being, there is no how that I'm aware of. Everything that creates something rarish (except Wish) outright states it can't be used for a spell component.

I'd imagine Wizard schools would seek to cultivate their own supplies (i.e. create a bat cave where guano can be harvested on a regular basis for free) to avoid such Imperial entanglements.

Fabricate could potentially be used to combine smaller, imperfect gems into a single, more expensive piece. That still isn't really creating components though, just upgrading, so it wouldn't solve the scarcity issue. A generous DM might rule that you could use Fabricate to make diamonds out of charcoal or graphite, but the way it's written leads me to believe it's limited to goods a skilled craftsman would actually be able to produce without magic. In any cast, it seems likely that schools of arcane magic, or other wizards organizations or guilds, would probably spend a good deal of time and money researching possible methods for creating rare components, and cultivating more common ones.

Although, I think spell foci would be the default casting method for any spell that didn't require a rare component with a gp value. Knowing that Fireball can be cast with bat guano seems like sort of a back up option taught in Wizard school in case a caster is ever caught without their wand and needs to make do. Sort of like learning long division - most people learn the concept and can do it if they need to, but in their daily lives would usually just use a calculator.

[Xetheral]

My guess is that far less than 1 in 1000 are of PC power levels, but there is likely a healthy middle class of people who have neither high power or potential for growth, but have skills or abilities elevating them beyond commoners (the blacksmith with good Strength and the ability to see the weaknesses both in weapons and armor, but also people, just as an example). This middle class will compose the majority of NPCs who are worth interacting with, but not major enough to factor into the plot.

I prefer a much more high-powered setting. While I don't have fixed ratios in my world, looking at some my notes suggests I frequently operate assuming 1 in 50 having class levels (usually at the level 1-5 range... above that I usually only put in the game deliberately, expect in major metropolises). That being said, many of the NPCs without class levels are going to have a proficiency bonus greater than 2, hit points to match, and possibly expertise and/or reliable talent. I do that because I want the "skill level" of the NPCs suggested by their ability check modifiers to correlate to their descriptive level of skill. For example, a master blacksmith (defined here as someone qualified to take apprentices) probably needs between a +6 and +10 on their check to use blacksmith tools, so I'll give them HPs in line with their proficiency bonus. Because most apprentices can eventually becomes masters in their own right (if they live long enough), this suggests a vaguely-linear progression of proficiency bonuses in my world (at least up to +4 or so).

[Vogonjeltz]

I disagree. The fluff in the PHB strongly implies they are about studying to gain knowledge. Which certainly explains why they are the only PHB class that gets access to all 5 Int skills. In fact, the only skills they get access to are Lore / Int skills, and two kinds of speaking skills (fooling via Deception or browbeating via Intimidation). Edit: I agree they do make deals to gain access to forbidden power. That's also part of what they are.

We're in agreement that they seek knowledge, but I disagree about the method Warlocks employ vis Wizards.

Warlock: "Once a pact is made, a warlock's thirst for knowledge and power can't be slaked with mere study and research." (PHB 106)
Wizard: "Though the casting of a typical spell requires merely the utterance of a few strange words, fleeting gestures, and sometimes a pinch or clump of exotic materials, these surface components barely hint at the expertise attained after years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study." (PHB 112)

I think Warlocks are characterized more by their pacts to gain knowledge and power wheras Wizards are characterized more by studying/researching to find knowledge and power. There could be overlap, but I think the driving forces are distinguishable.


Possibly. Although, if they were treated as a "public utility" by the local municipality and became as common in public areas as streetlights are today, who would want or need to buy them? And at that point, it might not be worth the risk of getting caught for the relatively low return. I guess that boils down to the demographics of how many casters a city has willing and able to cast continual flame, and how much money the local authorities are willing to invest on public lighting.

They last forever, so anyone and everyone who doesn't have them (i.e. Other cities, towns, villages, kingdoms). It would be the same reasons copper gets stripped and sold by thieves, it's a valuable and portable. http://gizmodo.com/5831515/why-in-the-hell-is-everyone-stealing-copper


On the other hand, there would be malicious deities that might encourage their acolytes to do the opposite, poisoning wells and spreading diseases.

Which is a perfect adventure hook for a campaign! The city seeing clusters of disease etc, leads to investigation of the water supply to ascertain that it is the source of the problem, which leads to a stake out to observe someone tainting it, which leads to uncovering the cultists/minions who are committing the crime, etc...


Fabricate could potentially be used to combine smaller, imperfect gems into a single, more expensive piece.

I'd think mending would be used, assuming the parts original composed a whole (i.e. ruby dust combined back into a ruby).

Fabricate seems to only create finished products, I don't think it can just combine a bunch of parts into a bigger part (i.e. A bunch of pebbles or gravel can't be turned into a boulder). Although assuming the process for creating diamonds synthetically were discovered, and the Wizard trained in the use of the tools involved, I suppose they could use Fabricate for that.

[RickAllison]

We're in agreement that they seek knowledge, but I disagree about the method Warlocks employ vis Wizards.

Warlock: "Once a pact is made, a warlock's thirst for knowledge and power can't be slaked with mere study and research." (PHB 106)
Wizard: "Though the casting of a typical spell requires merely the utterance of a few strange words, fleeting gestures, and sometimes a pinch or clump of exotic materials, these surface components barely hint at the expertise attained after years of apprenticeship and countless hours of study." (PHB 112)

I think Warlocks are characterized more by their pacts to gain knowledge and power wheras Wizards are characterized more by studying/researching to find knowledge and power. There could be overlap, but I think the driving forces are distinguishable.



They last forever, so anyone and everyone who doesn't have them (i.e. Other cities, towns, villages, kingdoms). It would be the same reasons copper gets stripped and sold by thieves, it's a valuable and portable. http://gizmodo.com/5831515/why-in-the-hell-is-everyone-stealing-copper



Which is a perfect adventure hook for a campaign! The city seeing clusters of disease etc, leads to investigation of the water supply to ascertain that it is the source of the problem, which leads to a stake out to observe someone tainting it, which leads to uncovering the cultists/minions who are committing the crime, etc...



I'd think mending would be used, assuming the parts original composed a whole (i.e. ruby dust combined back into a ruby).

Fabricate seems to only create finished products, I don't think it can just combine a bunch of parts into a bigger part (i.e. A bunch of pebbles or gravel can't be turned into a boulder). Although assuming the process for creating diamonds synthetically were discovered, and the Wizard trained in the use of the tools involved, I suppose they could use Fabricate for that.

Do note that your quote stated that their thirst for knowledge can't be slaked after they make the pact. It seems to be that study and research is how they gain the know-how to gain their pact. You know, the classic of looking into forbidden knowledge and finding that which man was not meant to know.

As for Fabricate, cut diamonds are definitely a finished product. Though they can be used further to create jewelry, a cut diamond has a value all its own.