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TheManicMonocle
2017-09-15, 01:48 PM
So I was thinking, do you think it's better for a fantasy magic world to have peasants with medieval technology, or peasants with magically enhanced medieval technology?

JNAProductions
2017-09-15, 01:56 PM
So I was thinking, do you think it's better for a fantasy magic world to have peasants with medieval technology, or peasants with magically enhanced medieval technology?

Really depends on the setting. Eberron? Magitek. Forgotten Realms? Not so much.

My personal preference is a fair amount of small magics. For instance, most villages will have a hedge wizard of some kind, the kind of person who knows perhaps Mending and Light cantrips. Probably Prestidigitation too. Handy for fixing your wagon's wheel, and entertaining kids, but no good in a fight.

Knaight
2017-09-15, 02:32 PM
There's not one best fantasy setting, and that pretty much renders the question unanswerable - neither is necessarily better than the other. There's also no need for a fantasy magic world to have either peasants or medieval technology at all.

TheManicMonocle
2017-09-15, 03:24 PM
There's not one best fantasy setting, and that pretty much renders the question unanswerable - neither is necessarily better than the other. There's also no need for a fantasy magic world to have either peasants or medieval technology at all.

This is true, I suppose my actual question is, what's your preference and why?

Drakevarg
2017-09-15, 03:53 PM
In my opinion, magic has to be strange and unusual or else it's not magic. Just weird, different science where the experts wear snuggies instead of labcoats. In which case, pretty much every educated character in the setting should have at least one level in wizard because academic understanding is literally all it takes to do wizard stuff.

So in regards to peasants, I think my usual interpretation is that most of them have seen something unusual in the woods once or twice, or something in the creepy old house, but someone right in front of them throwing around laser beams? Weird as heck. Magic items are bizarre SCP-like objects or family heirlooms with long histories behind them, not something used as a convenience tool.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-15, 04:20 PM
Peasants in my game worlds rarely have any real supernatural power. However, the social and technological state of things is closer to tail end of Early Modern period, rather than Medieval.

When peasants have "magic", it's of the "circle of salt wards off evil spirits" sort - a combination of superstition and use of talismans and natural materials against perceived supernatural threats. Some of these defenses are warranted, others less so. There are plenty of other weird beliefs and superstitions ("if you roll naked in rye during midsummer, you will see your future spouse!"), but those are nonsense. (People in real life have always been fond of nonsense and I see no reason for my fictional peoples to differ.)

Necroticplague
2017-09-15, 08:45 PM
I prefer the idea that PCs and their primary enemies are heroic everyman, not special once-in-blue moon people. The villians should just be relatively common people driven by relatable motives, and the heroes are simply 'the people who decided to do something about it'.

So, I prefer magic to be just as common for most people as for PCs. So if the PCs can reliably expect to find incrementally more enchanted versions of swords and armor, then there is presumably, if offscreen, equivalents for more domestic goods. There's a range of various +X plows capable of helping till through harder dirt, minor objects of useful home comforts, and some moderately priced magical appliances of similar nature to the PCs various utility items (i.e, the Faucet of Endless Water, the Oven of Endure Elements)

I'm also a large fan of ludonarrative harmony in TTRPs; the idea that the mechanics of the game actually inform you about the world the mechanics are simulating. So if the mechanics and the written setting clash with each other, I just make my own more in line with the mechanics. If the PCs level of magic indicates a setting that wouldn't have peasants, then I just assume there aren't any. If the mechanics indicate it's not hard for everybody to live in concentrated cities of practically first-world standards, I see nothing wrong assuming they do, what's already written be darned.

Anymage
2017-09-15, 10:00 PM
Assuming you're talking about being able to make up a setting and not having to care about what rules are attached to it, I'd prefer if low level magics were not horribly uncommon (the peasants wouldn't personally have any magic, but the town priest could perform a fertility ceremony over the fields). High power magic would become significantly rarer and more costly as the power improved.

What'd make this ideal setting fundamentally incompatible with D&D, aside from the part where vancian slots can be refilled cheaply and easily, would be how the definitions of "high power magic" would be different. Making an item that does its job better, like blessing a sword or a a field, should be easy and relatively cheap. Time and cost would still be factors, though. In addition to power, you'd have unnaturalness and thematic inconsistency; blessing a road so that travel is faster along it would be relatively easy. An airship would be harder. Teleport gates would be an epic magical undertaking beyond all but legendary magical powers. Great magical works would be collective undertakings by nature. Issues of cost and time would limit what one guy could pull out of his hat at a moment's notice.

Knaight
2017-09-16, 02:51 AM
This is true, I suppose my actual question is, what's your preference and why?

Between the two I'm more likely to like the sort of fantasy that has peasants with medieval tools, although moving away from that is more likely to catch my attention - I'll happily read something based on actual medieval Europe, but the generic fantasyland based on distinctly muddy understandings of England and France is a setting that I've grown really tired of. Dropping the medieval tools and bringing in other eras or sufficiently distant places to have major technological differences, and likely altering the social dynamics to preclude peasants qua peasants is where the fantasy settings most likely to interest me reside.

Mastikator
2017-09-16, 04:08 AM
Magic should be impractically expensive. If you want technology then just add technology, no need to add magitek for things that can be more easily and cheaply done with mundane means. (because for me it is immersion breaking)

Nifft
2017-09-16, 05:09 AM
So I was thinking, do you think it's better for a fantasy magic world to have peasants with medieval technology, or peasants with magically enhanced medieval technology?

I like when things are plausible.

In a D&D world, for example, it's very difficult to reconcile the extreme threat levels posed by monsters in the wilderness with anything resembling historical farm practices.

So, if you're talking about peasants in a game like D&D, I'd always be on the side of magic.


Whose magic, though? Probably not the peasants themselves, because if they had their own magic, they would tend to stop being peasants.

That means it's usually an outside force of some kind.


If I'm feeling creative, then each village or region will have a different outside force.

Maybe the three heartland valleys will be supported by the Royal Druidic Council of Agriculture and Roads. At the appropriate times of year, one of the royal Druids comes through and casts the appropriate crop-growing spells. They're the three most loyal districts, of course.

Maybe the farms around Drywood Hill were founded right after the War of Three Giants, in the ashes of the old forest, in spite of the legends about the witches on the hill. The towns come together every year for an unusually raucous midsummer celebration -- they even pay for outside entertainment, and the towns certainly subsidize the festival's ale and hard cider supply. The townsfolk say it's to show off, and maybe get some new blood. Every few years, though, some beautiful boy visits the festival but doesn't come back. The witch-nymph of Drywood Hill has taken a meal back to her grove of dryads. In return, she annually blesses the fields, and protects the farmers from comparable threats, according to the contract she forged with the humans in the wake of the war. She's not really happy with the arrangement, but she tolerates it because the alternative was being burned out by the giants.

Stuff like that.

Mechalich
2017-09-16, 06:29 AM
If your setting has magic sufficiently commonplace and utilitarian to the point where it has filtered down to have a material effect on everyday activities by the peasants - which is what magically enhanced technology means - then you no longer have a medieval setting with magical elements, you have a magical setting and you need to either determine what the setting that follows from whatever your magic system happens to be accordingly, or commit to ignoring the implications of how such widespread magic would change your world (the latter is by far the more common route, but it is inherently lacking in verisimilitude and as a result, has limits on how serious the drama can be).

As a result, if you want medieval peasants functioning in a largely agrarian economy to be the principle population group of your setting, then there's a limit on how much magic you can have, and, equally important, how functional that magic can be. For example, the most common mystical elements in most societies are not ritual 'wizard-style' magical elements but instead supernatural religious elements. After all, the most common type of 'magic-user' in 13th Century France was the local priest. Such persons are actually quite common. Pre-industrial society had a lot of religious figures.

'Wizard' type magic is often limited by an education barrier. For example, in the classic case of a wizard who studies ancient tomes, recites incantations, and conducts complex magical works, class is a barrier. You have to be able to read and to devote potentially years of study to achieving even the basics. Peasants can't do that, so they don't get to be wizards. Or if there's some essential spark required plus years of study, peasant children get carried off from their parents and remade into wizards - another common approach (the Wheel of Time uses this, among others). Since the educated class in a medieval world is maybe one percent of society, that imposes some really quite strict limits on how abundant magic can be. This is actually a good natural limit, since most fantasy medieval settings make much more sense if wizards are the 0.01% of society and magic lacks abundance and ability to scale as a result.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-09-16, 06:31 AM
I like a fair bit of magic in my quasi-medieval fantasy. Everybody gets a couple of free cantrips SLAs, schools teach first-level SLAs, masters teach magecraft to apprentices, that sort of thing. Only educated specialists cast real spells, but there are some early universities that teach the Art.

Darth Ultron
2017-09-16, 07:46 AM
I like the common folk to have simple and useful magic.

So like they have a 'hot knife' for cutting through soft things. Or a broom that can animate and sweep a room.

They, in general, don't have adventuring magic like fireballs. But they do have all the protective magics. So they have a combination of abjuration and enchantment magic.

I love the sort of stuff like ''the river Osst has a enchantment on it, so if anyone gets close they feel happy and get a compulsion to go see their family. And the clever peasant's build a town right on that river.

Faily
2017-09-16, 10:36 AM
I prefer my peasants unmagical, digging in dirt, critical of systems of government, and standing up the violence inherent in the system.

:smallbiggrin:

Seclora
2017-09-16, 11:32 AM
I like there to be plentiful NPC casters, Acolytes in temples and shrines across the land, local alchemists in small towns, and wizards common enough everyone knows that so-and-so's boy is in-training and generally where at. However, like Dragons, high level casters are much less common on account of how most die before they can get to that level.
Most peasants would have awareness of the difference between the types of magic and know where they could buy a healing potion if they needed one. Those with enough cash might buy an enchanted plow, hire a local druid to empower their crops, or own an everburning lantern to light the house.


I prefer my peasants unmagical, digging in dirt, critical of systems of government, and standing up the violence inherent in the system.

:smallbiggrin:

I like my Peasants to be oppressed. Serves 'em right for not voting for me.:smallamused:

Pleh
2017-09-16, 12:23 PM
My peasant magic depends on the society the belong to.

More primitive cultures revere (and have trouble trusting) mages and clerics, which are few in number and typically rule their communities, guide from outside, or are outcasts. Most spells used are healing and divination.

Rural villages might be fortunate enough to have a parish lead by a priest with heroic levels, but any non native magics are intensely mistrusted (as it usually belongs to larger, healthier, sometimes interracial communuties with whom relations are strained). These towns add morale and strength buffing spells to the typical repertoire.

Larger towns usually are far more adept with magic, having a few more resident mages and clerics to make the population feel familiar with magic and protected by it. At this level, magic becomes plentiful enough to exhibit recreationally in addition to fixing common problems. Also, magicians begin to lose some political sway as the social structure is no longer helpless against a low level caster. They begin to face law restrictions on their magical activities.

Large cities tend to have little fear of magic (at least as a collective body). They have a decent chance to provide patronage to a college of the arcane arts and they almost certainly hold a distinguished cathedral lead by a mid to upper level cleric, served by a small army of student clerics. These established spellcasting authorities help monitor and regulate malicious magic use in the city and surrounding region, but even the city guard is sufficiently numerous and equipped to handle most low level caster threats without involving the mages. This is the level where magical curiosity shops and legendary magic item crafters can often be found.

The only larger category is a political capital, which sacrifices some economic size for higher security and bigger government offices.

Clearly, this assumes standard human society. Modify for culture and race as necessary.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-16, 12:51 PM
In my opinion, magic has to be strange and unusual or else it's not magic. Just weird, different science where the experts wear snuggies instead of labcoats. In which case, pretty much every educated character in the setting should have at least one level in wizard because academic understanding is literally all it takes to do wizard stuff.


That's where I'm glad I don't play 3.5e. For me, being a wizard is more than being able to wave your hands. Most people (as in 99%) can, if they practice a lot, learn to do a few simple tricks (a cantrip, maybe a 1st level spell). Some may have made friends with a few particular spirits who are willing to do favors for them (druids). A decent chunk have racial aptitudes for specific spells. What they don't have is spell slots. In my world, these are actual parts of the soul of certain people. They're pockets full of anima (soul stuff, magical energy) that can be funneled into a pattern (a spell). Without the anima, waving your hands around does nothing even if you do it exactly.

1% of the population has the potential to gain power equivalent to a 1st level PC. 10% of those (0.1%) can hit the equivalent of level 5. 10% of those (0.01%) can hit level 11. 10% of those can hit level 17 (0.001%), and 10% of those can hit level 20 (0.0001%, about one in a million). That's only potential. Many people with that potential live and die ignorant of it, or die young, develop it in other ways, etc.

Most NPC spell-casters are either a) magically-blooded (and therefore similar to sorcerers except with x/day casting) or b) people who have particular talents. That talented healer who can cast resurrection? She's not a level 13 Cleric (with all that that entails), but a person who is particularly blessed by her goddess with healing powers due to her faith and devotion. She's effectively got a hot-line to the goddess who directly answers her prayers with a spell, as long as they're for very particular things and are done in particular ways. While healing, she's directly an arm of her goddess; while not channeling that energy, she's a regular person. That means if she irritates her goddess, bye-bye powers. That seer? He's been studying divination for years and can only really cast divination spells, but he's darn good at it.

Only PCs (and a few others) are generalists. No one else gets to pick from a list of spells ranging from illusions to nukes. Even most wizards take years to learn a new spell. Of course, they can learn spells that PCs will never be able to (because they're not willing to spend decades studying and personalizing it, nor are they willing to spend a week chanting a spell with 63 other people to cast it).

Drakevarg
2017-09-16, 01:12 PM
Only PCs (and a few others) are generalists.

I think this premise is a big part of the reason why I butt heads philosophically with a lot of other D&D players. I have always rejected the premise of The Special. Destiny is hogwash, the heroes aren't unique, and outside of their direct sphere of influence they don't matter. They're nothing more than talented and lucky individuals who were in the right place at the right time. Anything they can do, it's a safe assumption that anyone else can replicate it in the right circumstances.

This is also why I usually play low magic - the idea that anything the PCs can do, anyone else can do with proper motivation, and the notion that the PCs can casually bend reality to their whims don't play well together in any sort of coherent setting.

I've never cared for the Superman myth, and have always found the argument that we need to look up to him as something to aspire to because he's better than we could ever hope to be utterly ridiculous. Where some people see a beacon of hope and a source of awe, I see nothing but petty self-indulgence.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-16, 01:53 PM
I think this premise is a big part of the reason why I butt heads philosophically with a lot of other D&D players. I have always rejected the premise of The Special. Destiny is hogwash, the heroes aren't unique, and outside of their direct sphere of influence they don't matter. They're nothing more than talented and lucky individuals who were in the right place at the right time. Anything they can do, it's a safe assumption that anyone else can replicate it in the right circumstances.


De gustibas and all that. My PCs aren't destined--they are special (mainly because 99.9% of everyone doesn't leave 10 miles from where they were born, and that makes for a boring RPG). There are many adventurers--most of them don't live past their first few missions. The PCs aren't unique either--I tend to run branching timelines and have several groups running from the same starting point and their changes persist (and sometimes get merged back into the canonical timeline). My players find that having their successes (or failures!) of campaigns past actually change the setting is a huge draw for them.



This is also why I usually play low magic - the idea that anything the PCs can do, anyone else can do with proper motivation, and the notion that the PCs can casually bend reality to their whims don't play well together in any sort of coherent setting.


5e doesn't really have that problem. Even at high levels, no one is casually bending reality to their wills (unless the DM is compliant). Although a 20th level character is powerful, he's can still be brought down by a legion of archers (for example). It's a much more human scale (although still more powerful than some people like, which I fully understand) than 3.PF was.



I've never cared for the Superman myth, and have always found the argument that we need to look up to him as something to aspire to because he's better than we could ever hope to be utterly ridiculous. Where some people see a beacon of hope and a source of awe, I see nothing but petty self-indulgence.

If that was in response to me, I'm not sure how. I'm not fond of comic-book superheros at all and would never use them as positive examples of things.

Drakevarg
2017-09-16, 02:03 PM
If that was in response to me, I'm not sure how. I'm not fond of comic-book superheros at all and would never use them as positive examples of things.

More just a continuation of my distaste for The Special.

Knaight
2017-09-16, 02:11 PM
In my opinion, magic has to be strange and unusual or else it's not magic. Just weird, different science where the experts wear snuggies instead of labcoats. In which case, pretty much every educated character in the setting should have at least one level in wizard because academic understanding is literally all it takes to do wizard stuff.

It's also all it takes to do science, yet far from every educated person is capable of actually doing difficult science, and that's with modern standards where 12 years of education isn't seen as enough to make one educated.

Drakevarg
2017-09-16, 02:22 PM
It's also all it takes to do science, yet far from every educated person is capable of actually doing difficult science, and that's with modern standards where 12 years of education isn't seen as enough to make one educated.

No, but the average educated person (and by educated I don't mean "has a degree," I mean educated as in "has reached the basic social expectations of education") knows rudimentary chemistry, mathematics, engineering, astronomy, and physics. In a world where knowing how things work = exerting some level of control over them, basic book learning would logically afford a minor capacity for spellcasting.

And, related to my above rejection of "The Special," no I don't buy that a first level wizard has the equivalent of a doctorate, let alone a PhD. Being a wizard is well within the capacity of races with lifespans significantly shorter (and intellects objectively dimmer, so it's not a raw talent thing) than humans, so it's not like it takes 30-odd years to learn how to cast cantrips (unless you're an elf, in which case it takes that long to get toilet trained).

Knaight
2017-09-16, 03:33 PM
And, related to my above rejection of "The Special," no I don't buy that a first level wizard has the equivalent of a doctorate, let alone a PhD. Being a wizard is well within the capacity of races with lifespans significantly shorter (and intellects objectively dimmer, so it's not a raw talent thing) than humans, so it's not like it takes 30-odd years to learn how to cast cantrips (unless you're an elf, in which case it takes that long to get toilet trained).

I'm all for rejection of the special, but it's worth observing that some level of specialization is common in basically any society. Any given person is probably more capable than the vast majority of people at something, simply by virtue of there being so many different skills in life. That first level wizard is thus going to be better than the vast majority of people at wizard magic, the same way a first level fighter is going to be better than the vast majority of people at fighting, the same way a first level silversmith* is going to be better than the vast majority of people at working with silver. A given first level farmer* probably isn't better than the vast majority of people at farming, but that's just because almost everyone farms and thus the class is very broad. They may very well be better than the vast majority of people at birthing goats, while another might be better than the vast majority of people at digging properly sized furrows for millet.

The wizard also doesn't need the equivalent of a doctorate, they just need more specialized wizard education than most. It's roughly analogous to a freshman engineering student already being better than most people at math. It's not that they're particularly impressive, it's that choosing to specialize beyond the societal baseline at all puts one in surprisingly high percentiles at a skill.

*To use a hypothetical class.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-16, 03:50 PM
I'm all for rejection of the special, but it's worth observing that some level of specialization is common in basically any society. Any given person is probably more capable than the vast majority of people at something, simply by virtue of there being so many different skills in life. That first level wizard is thus going to be better than the vast majority of people at wizard magic, the same way a first level fighter is going to be better than the vast majority of people at fighting, the same way a first level silversmith* is going to be better than the vast majority of people at working with silver. A given first level farmer* probably isn't better than the vast majority of people at farming, but that's just because almost everyone farms and thus the class is very broad. They may very well be better than the vast majority of people at birthing goats, while another might be better than the vast majority of people at digging properly sized furrows for millet.

The wizard also doesn't need the equivalent of a doctorate, they just need more specialized wizard education than most. It's roughly analogous to a freshman engineering student already being better than most people at math. It's not that they're particularly impressive, it's that choosing to specialize beyond the societal baseline at all puts one in surprisingly high percentiles at a skill.

*To use a hypothetical class.

I very much agree. My training is in an area where specialization is the norm--an expert in Computational Collision Theory (a branch of quantum mechanics) isn't better than an average upper-division physics student at much of the rest of physics (due to skills degenerating with disuse). When it comes to other areas of science, I'm no better than any other person who took a few classes in college a long time ago. Specialization simultaneously brings great benefits while also imposing costs.

In 5e D&D, a level 1 character is only slightly better (higher ability scores, a little more health, a few class abilities) than a commoner. And about the same as a guard or tribal warrior. A level 20 character is much better in most ways, but non-proficient skills and saves aren't significantly better than those of the commoner. Characters develop in their specialty, but not outside of it.

The characters are special because we chose to focus on them (as opposed to anyone else in the setting), and we focus on them because they're different than the norm. If 99% of the world are illiterate peasants, educated people are special. I don't know about you, but Farming Simulator Medieval Fantasy is not what I'm looking for in a game. :smallamused:

Samzat
2017-09-16, 03:54 PM
I love low fanatasy, so I usually have peasants whose magical interaction is at most a monster in the woods, a mystic of some sort (like a witch or a shaman or something) or in extreme cases have made a pact with a minor outsider or spirit. Maybe the elder has a minor magic bauble like a protective talisman or ring, but otherwise not very mucn magic.

Drakevarg
2017-09-16, 04:01 PM
In 5e D&D, a level 1 character is only slightly better (higher ability scores, a little more health, a few class abilities) than a commoner. And about the same as a guard or tribal warrior. A level 20 character is much better in most ways, but non-proficient skills and saves aren't significantly better than those of the commoner. Characters develop in their specialty, but not outside of it.

This part is pretty much my point with "if academic understanding is sufficient for magic, then everybody with an education should at least be capable of rudimentary spellcasing." Sort of in the same way that anyone who has been through military basic training probably has at least one level of Fighter (or some other martial class as appropriate). Obviously a professional wizard is going to be a better wizard than the vast majority of other people, and a black-ops operative could probably trounce most E1 privates with next-to-no effort. But they're also not level 1 characters, i.e. "just barely better than the dishwasher at the inn."

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-16, 04:09 PM
This part is pretty much my point with "if academic understanding is sufficient for magic, then everybody with an education should at least be capable of rudimentary spellcasing." Sort of in the same way that anyone who has been through military basic training probably has at least one level of Fighter (or some other martial class as appropriate). Obviously a professional wizard is going to be a better wizard than the vast majority of other people, and a black-ops operative could probably trounce most E1 privates with next-to-no effort. But they're also not level 1 characters, i.e. "just barely better than the dishwasher at the inn."

But nothing about the system requires that everyone is capable of gaining class levels. The class/race rules really don't apply to NPCs--they're only for PCs (by explicit construction).

Most temple workers aren't Clerics, most guards aren't Fighters, most monastic dwellers aren't Monks. Most scholars of the arcane aren't Wizards. This is actually called out explicitly in the rules. There's a long-standing tradition in fantasy of the "academic who studies magic, but can't actually use it." Innate talent is explicitly called out in the class descriptions.

That is, I'm disputing the validity of the conditional. Academic training is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a Wizard--you can be a Wizard who picked it up on the street (Urchin background); military training is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a Fighter--you can be a Fighter who spent his life in a library (Sage background). Or who grew up in a temple (Acolyte background).

FreddyNoNose
2017-09-16, 04:15 PM
Magic should be impractically expensive. If you want technology then just add technology, no need to add magitek for things that can be more easily and cheaply done with mundane means. (because for me it is immersion breaking)

There is nothing wrong with a magic technocracy. You can mixed magic and tech in a world, like Dave Hargrave did with his Arduin.

FreddyNoNose
2017-09-16, 04:17 PM
I like when things are plausible.

In a D&D world, for example, it's very difficult to reconcile the extreme threat levels posed by monsters in the wilderness with anything resembling historical farm practices.

So, if you're talking about peasants in a game like D&D, I'd always be on the side of magic.


Whose magic, though? Probably not the peasants themselves, because if they had their own magic, they would tend to stop being peasants.

That means it's usually an outside force of some kind.


If I'm feeling creative, then each village or region will have a different outside force.

Maybe the three heartland valleys will be supported by the Royal Druidic Council of Agriculture and Roads. At the appropriate times of year, one of the royal Druids comes through and casts the appropriate crop-growing spells. They're the three most loyal districts, of course.

Maybe the farms around Drywood Hill were founded right after the War of Three Giants, in the ashes of the old forest, in spite of the legends about the witches on the hill. The towns come together every year for an unusually raucous midsummer celebration -- they even pay for outside entertainment, and the towns certainly subsidize the festival's ale and hard cider supply. The townsfolk say it's to show off, and maybe get some new blood. Every few years, though, some beautiful boy visits the festival but doesn't come back. The witch-nymph of Drywood Hill has taken a meal back to her grove of dryads. In return, she annually blesses the fields, and protects the farmers from comparable threats, according to the contract she forged with the humans in the wake of the war. She's not really happy with the arrangement, but she tolerates it because the alternative was being burned out by the giants.

Stuff like that.

I think you are on the right track there Nifft. If everyone is running around with spells, what does that do? Is it only those who can toss off top level spells are special? Magic would be like ordinary long swords. Do we think about those all the time?

Drakevarg
2017-09-16, 05:08 PM
But nothing about the system requires that everyone is capable of gaining class levels. The class/race rules really don't apply to NPCs--they're only for PCs (by explicit construction).

Most temple workers aren't Clerics, most guards aren't Fighters, most monastic dwellers aren't Monks. Most scholars of the arcane aren't Wizards. This is actually called out explicitly in the rules. There's a long-standing tradition in fantasy of the "academic who studies magic, but can't actually use it." Innate talent is explicitly called out in the class descriptions.

That's a) a conceit of The Special (the notion that the PCs are in any way distinct from their peers), which I categorically reject, and b) a notion established in 5e. In 3.5e all systems apply equally to all subjects. This is not a point of common ground so there's no point in debate.


That is, I'm disputing the validity of the conditional. Academic training is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a Wizard--you can be a Wizard who picked it up on the street (Urchin background); military training is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a Fighter--you can be a Fighter who spent his life in a library (Sage background). Or who grew up in a temple (Acolyte background).

I only used the sources as an example. But academic understanding of magic is literally the definition of a wizard in D&D; it's what makes the class distinct from a sorcerer, who understands magic intuitively thanks to their heritage. And outside of system definitions, "academic understanding = magic" was the entire concept I brought up in the first place. If that's not how wizards work in X setting/system, then those aren't the wizards I'm talking about.

Hagashager
2017-09-16, 05:58 PM
I am personally partial to lower magic setting where mages are not common place and the average person, particularly the peasantry, live a pretty medieval life.

I love mages, wizards, sorcerers etc. but I love them when their power is actually meaningful, I don't care for settings where every person and their grandmother knows a cantrip or two, and where magic is an every-day occurrence that is just part of the daily routine.

so to answer your question, I like my peasants to have no magic. If a member of the peasantry possesses, or is learning to use magic, chances are they won't be sticking around that village for much longer, either to be taken by a wizard as an apprentice, or executed if they're unlucky enough to be living in a society that regards magic as evil.

KillianHawkeye
2017-09-16, 06:18 PM
So I was thinking, do you think it's better for a fantasy magic world to have peasants with medieval technology, or peasants with magically enhanced medieval technology?

I don't understand your question. If they had either of those things, they wouldn't be lowly peasants.

Knaight
2017-09-17, 02:50 AM
This part is pretty much my point with "if academic understanding is sufficient for magic, then everybody with an education should at least be capable of rudimentary spellcasing." Sort of in the same way that anyone who has been through military basic training probably has at least one level of Fighter (or some other martial class as appropriate). Obviously a professional wizard is going to be a better wizard than the vast majority of other people, and a black-ops operative could probably trounce most E1 privates with next-to-no effort. But they're also not level 1 characters, i.e. "just barely better than the dishwasher at the inn."

The problem here is that academic understanding isn't just one thing. There are fields which require a lot of knowledge to enter at all, and there are fields that can be entered with minimal training. It's entirely possible that even rudimentary spellcasting is one of those fields with really high entrance requirements, and thus not everyone educated is able to do it.

Mechalich
2017-09-17, 03:29 AM
The problem here is that academic understanding isn't just one thing. There are fields which require a lot of knowledge to enter at all, and there are fields that can be entered with minimal training. It's entirely possible that even rudimentary spellcasting is one of those fields with really high entrance requirements, and thus not everyone educated is able to do it.

That's certainly possible. It is entirely possible that learning to use magic requires a concrete understanding of a particular set of principles that most brains aren't able to do easily. This, in fact, the setup of the Laundry universe, where magic is a effectively a branch of specialized mathematics and is really, really difficult to do without the aid of computers because doing the calculations in your head is really hard and when you screw up elder horrors literally eat your brain. That does tend to cut the field down significantly.

However, and this is a very important caveat, magic isn't like learning quantum theory. Learning to use magic has practical impacts that are immense. You could be the greatest physicist since Einstein and no matter how much you learn in your field you won't learn how to kill people with your brain, but if you're learning magic you very well could become able to do that. As a result, the more potent the magic available in a universe, the greater the pressure to master it will be. The greater the pressure to achieve mastery, the more extreme the steps taken to produce magic users will be. All the stories you see out there - particularly common in East Asian storytelling - about taking little children and turning them in fanatically loyal death machines in the service of the state will be doubly true, only with spellcasters instead of assassins. This absolutely can be done with intellectual endeavor by the way - the national examination system used in imperial China - which forced young men who wanted to ascend in the bureaucracy to master Confucian theory until their eyes bled - is a good example of how such a thing might work.

So while there are advantages to saying that magic is powerful but has substantial barriers to entry that prevent it from being widespread, there are some dark consequences to that approach too.

The bottom line is that high-powered magic or highly abundant magic is always more difficult to balance than low powered or uncommon magic. When you add magic to a setting what you're doing is adding energy to the system, and the more energy you add to a system, the more unstable it becomes. That's inevitable. Applies to chemistry and storytelling.

oxybe
2017-09-17, 03:53 AM
low level wizards & clerics are somewhat rare by virtue of the "studious" and "pious" archetypes, but druids, sorcerors & warlock types not so much rare as powerful ones are uncommon. lots are able to use a single cantrip or weaker level magic. People known to have offensive magics are basically treated as armed individuals.

quality of life magic items are common enough: magical firestarters, chalk that can write in mid-air, self-filling canteens, portable campfires, gloves of prestidigitation, quills of copying, etc... are common enough that you can possibly see a few of these things stocking shelves in larger cities or those with a large adventurer population be it new, used or recovered from a corpse.

Basic magic swords aren't stocked in large amounts, but it's not uncommon to see one on display. More esoteric weapon types or a stronger enchantment would require special order.

High level magic stuff is rare or hidden away in out of reach areas, but low level BS is all over the place.

ahyangyi
2017-09-17, 07:37 AM
I prefer to have clerics available to everyday rural life. They can fix your minor wounds and their existence reinforce your faith (if you happen to believe in the same deity).
Wizards are slightly more urban and therefore farther from peasant's life. If you are really lucky (or unlucky) you might actually have a witch or alchemist living nearby, but you just don't know.

ImNotTrevor
2017-09-17, 01:50 PM
My favorite system is essentially like this:
Fairly basic folk magic (practical magic) works just fine.
(Disclaimer: my knowledge of how real-life folk magic works is highly limited, so I'm just making things up for most of my examples.)

Want to prevent scrying? Ring of salt works.
Want to keep bad spirits out of your house? A sprig of holly over the door or a holy symbol on prominent display does just that.
Need your crops to grow bigger? Sprinkle the blood of the firstborn pig of the season onto the western fence of your homestead.
Make your axe stay sharp longer by covering it in the ash of a birchwood fire before you sharpen it.
Need an extra hand for an hour or so? A bit of potash and mouse blood mixed into a cornmeal cake and placed in a salt ring is sure to attract an imp. Make a deal to break the salt ring in exchange for some help around the house!

This lets peasants emulate the most handy spell effects for practical purposes using very minor, simple rituals.

With this, pretty much every town has a local Witch or Wizard who knows how to do all these practical magicks and will give minor additional boons that require greater mastery in exchange for coin or favors. These boons are temporary and weak, but are better than not having them. This makes the local Witch or Wizard a town eccentric that everyone puts up with and respects because they have genuine power, but it also makes the peasants basically competent human beings who use the rules of magic to better their lives in practical ways that don't make things unrealistic.

Psikerlord
2017-09-18, 07:34 PM
I prefer peasants to have zero magic, but then I prefer low magic worlds, where even great cities have but one or a handful of known casters - if any.

Waxpapers
2017-09-18, 08:31 PM
Personally, I like my peasant magic like traditional medicine. A lot of it is bunk, just like a lot of herbal cures are bunk. But some of it is the equivalent of boiling willow bark, which contains Salicin (a precursor to asprin) to stop a fever. The farmwife's circle of salt isn't good for keeping away anything of real power, but it still does something, and it'll keep out mischievous faeries of no importance. And just like we can refine and mass produce the salicin in willow bark and get asprin, we can take the circle of salt to keep out faeries and refine it into the magic circles used by mages of true power.

Grim Portent
2017-09-19, 03:37 AM
I prefer to have peasants basically magic free, though not superstition free. One in every few dozen villages and hamlets may have a hedge wizard, someone with just enough magical ability to light campfires, cure minor ailments and other minor magics. Skilled hedge wizards might become court wizards some day if they attract a nobles attention and don't get killed because someone had a bad harvest or a stillbirth and blamed it on them.

Real mages are rare, usually there's less than 3 to a kingdom and their power is terrifying but arbitrarily applied because by the time you have as much power as them you tend to go a little off in the head.

Permanent magical items are rare beyond measure. A powerful mage can create maybe three in their lifetime and most never bother because of the personal investment involved.

Peasant superstitions like iron to keep elves away and scary masks to scare off monsters are quite common, though most don't do a whole lot. Peasants as a whole have little exposure to life outside their own home area and whatever market town they sell goods at. The most the average person knows about magic is that their great-great grandfather's village was burned to the ground and it's people burned by dark lightning for refusing to join the army of some tyrant mage or a friend of a friend's tale about his cousin being turned into a newt for bothering the local hedge wizard.

Jay R
2017-09-19, 09:37 AM
Do you want the arcane mysteries of unknown forces or simple, straightforward technology?

A light spell available to everybody is not significantly different from a flashlight.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-19, 10:40 AM
In the setting I'm working on right now, there will be "small magic" among the common folk, based on animism and little rituals and taboos and the like, that does have some noticeable effect but doesn't radically alter things. I'm trying for a feel like it could be the magic, or it could be a natural effect; so there's an special recipe for fighting infections that starts with a certain mold... implying it could be the little plant spirits or it could be rudimentary antibiotics. And not the impact of modern antibiotics, but it can make the difference between dying or coming out of it after hitting bottom.

Necroticplague
2017-09-19, 11:24 AM
It's not magic if everyone has it. At that point, it's just modern technology with a coat of pain and a BS handwave. Your average person should have no access to magic whatsoever. Neither should the PCs regularly, for that matter. Magic should be kept actually magic by ensuring that only very rare NPCs and plot devices can make use of it. Ideally, plot devices kept out of PCs hands (so that they don't ruin the mystery of it from regular use).

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-19, 11:48 AM
It's not magic if everyone has it. At that point, it's just modern technology with a coat of pain and a BS handwave. Your average person should have no access to magic whatsoever. Neither should the PCs regularly, for that matter. Magic should be kept actually magic by ensuring that only very rare NPCs and plot devices can make use of it. Ideally, plot devices kept out of PCs hands (so that they don't ruin the mystery of it from regular use).

So magic pretty much 100% plot device and GM tool?

Necroticplague
2017-09-19, 11:56 AM
So magic pretty much 100% plot device and GM tool?

Yes. That what makes it magic, instead of just technology different from our own. If you let the PCs use it, it stops being magic, and just becomes 'a thing they can do.' A massive conflagration that roasts an entire room is impressive the first time. It's less so when you do it 5 times a day.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-19, 12:23 PM
Yes. That what makes it magic, instead of just technology different from our own. If you let the PCs use it, it stops being magic, and just becomes 'a thing they can do.' A massive conflagration that roasts an entire room is impressive the first time. It's less so when you do it 5 times a day.

In the real world, magic is mysterious, and strange, and personal... because it's either completely unreal or so unreliable it might as well be.

In a world with real magic, I'd expect it to be about as mysterious and personal as water wheels, flint and steel, or a carpenter's mallet. At most it would be like the "wonders" of Hero/Heron of Alexandria, mysterious to the layman but not to any person with access to knowledge of how it works. I don't really expect magic to be both useful and "strange".

Pleh
2017-09-19, 12:49 PM
Ah, the blanket, objective definitions phrased to rule out dissenting ideas placed on a subjective topic in a thread attempting to survey various opinions.

Magic can be whatever you want it to be, because we make it up.

In general, we can say, "magic is something" or "magic can be anything."

When we talk about "magic as something," it really is always science with the perception of the fantastic, because as being a set thing, it will have particular properties and behaviors that can be predicted and manipulated.

When we talk about "magic as anything," we emphasize the mysterious, often incomprehensible nature whose behavior specifically is not predictable or routinely manipulable. It can manifest in any way at any time.

Both of these are valid definitions of magic.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-19, 01:39 PM
Ah, the blanket, objective definitions phrased to rule out dissenting ideas placed on a subjective topic in a thread attempting to survey various opinions.


If I came across that way, it wasn't my intent.

(Thus the phrasing "I'd expect it to be" and "I don't really expect".)




Magic can be whatever you want it to be, because we make it up.

In general, we can say, "magic is something" or "magic can be anything."

When we talk about "magic as something," it really is always science with the perception of the fantastic, because as being a set thing, it will have particular properties and behaviors that can be predicted and manipulated.

When we talk about "magic as anything," we emphasize the mysterious, often incomprehensible nature whose behavior specifically is not predictable or routinely manipulable. It can manifest in any way at any time.

Both of these are valid definitions of magic.


That's an interesting distinction. The unspoken mismatch of "something" vs "anything" might explain some of the going around in circles that happens in these discussions.

Vogie
2017-09-19, 01:50 PM
It really depends on the world you're trying to create. If you're going Tolkien-esque, then yes magic has to be mysterious and unknown, and you're only going to find it if you're a traveler or part of the chosen few. On the other hand, you can have perfectly captivating worlds that you could build a world in where it is commonplace. If there's a magic university, then there's going to be a way for the dropouts to make a living as well.


I don't understand your question. If they had either of those things, they wouldn't be lowly peasants.

Why? In Avatar: the Last Airbender, there are entire villages of peasants that are still benders. Earthbenders that are just elevator operators, Firebenders that work in the smithies. In Brent Weeks' Lightbringer series, many drafters aren't really allowed to leave their villages - they need those green drafters for building maintenance, or orange drafters acting as mechanical engineers.

Being an adventurer just means you've risen above the need/desire to stay home. Just because we have automated tractors in the modern day, doesn't mean there aren't farmers anymore.

Applying magic to a world doesn't mean that people aren't lowly peasants anymore. If a smith has Mage hand, they're still a smith. If the merchant can prestidigitate to make their wares slightly more sparkly, still a merchant. Scribes with Comprehend languages are just slightly better scribes. A farmer may still not own their own land if they can cast continual flame, but they will certainly would be able to work into the night; in fact, I can already picture an elderly subsistence farmer who just uses animate dead solely during harvest time for extra hands. A funeral director that can cast Gentle Repose or a beat cop that can use Hold Person while he or she reads them their rights isn't going to break anything, nor does it mean they're ready to take on the world.

Depending on the level of magic in the world, you could have broke wizards with dead end jobs as teleportation specialists that just move people from place to place to until they get their student loans paid.

NovenFromTheSun
2017-09-19, 10:50 PM
Potions always felt appropriate as peasant magic. After all, they tend to require plants, and many peasants specialize in growing plants.

Friv
2017-09-20, 12:50 AM
It's not magic if everyone has it. At that point, it's just modern technology with a coat of pain and a BS handwave. Your average person should have no access to magic whatsoever. Neither should the PCs regularly, for that matter. Magic should be kept actually magic by ensuring that only very rare NPCs and plot devices can make use of it. Ideally, plot devices kept out of PCs hands (so that they don't ruin the mystery of it from regular use).

Magic is only technology if it behaves like technology.

If magic requires certain attitudes, or conjunctions of mystical energies, or for the person using it to empty their mind properly, it can be common, and also mystical. If the local hedge witch can steal luck from one person and give it to someone else, that is a reliable and difficult to judge effect that leaves its user in great demand and also kind of distrusted. If true belief in the gods allows a priest to hasten the healing of disease, but only if the penitent makes a sacrifice by giving up an indulgence that is important only to them, and the disease returns if they do not keep their oath, your village will not have the same threat of plague, but it's not like getting penicillin from the pharmacy. If the blacksmith knows a ritual which binds hope into a blade, ensuring that it will not break so long as its wielder stands alongside their friends, you have a good steel knife, but also you have a weapon that encourages certain types of combat.

Technology changes the world because of what it can do. Magic changes the world because of what it can do, and because of what it requires of you.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying, "Yes, I love to have a lot of very little magical things in my world, such that most villages have someone who knows one or two old rituals passed down through the generations".

Jay R
2017-09-20, 01:09 AM
Potions always felt appropriate as peasant magic. After all, they tend to require plants, and many peasants specialize in growing plants.

Yes, and today's alternative fuels require plants as well. But today's farmers aren't developing alternative fuels. They are selling corn to scientists who develop alternative fuels. Similarly, miners of guano pits aren't developing Fireball sells; they are selling guano to wizards, who can develop spells.

Mechalich
2017-09-20, 01:23 AM
Magic is only technology if it behaves like technology.

If magic requires certain attitudes, or conjunctions of mystical energies, or for the person using it to empty their mind properly, it can be common, and also mystical. If the local hedge witch can steal luck from one person and give it to someone else, that is a reliable and difficult to judge effect that leaves its user in great demand and also kind of distrusted. If true belief in the gods allows a priest to hasten the healing of disease, but only if the penitent makes a sacrifice by giving up an indulgence that is important only to them, and the disease returns if they do not keep their oath, your village will not have the same threat of plague, but it's not like getting penicillin from the pharmacy. If the blacksmith knows a ritual which binds hope into a blade, ensuring that it will not break so long as its wielder stands alongside their friends, you have a good steel knife, but also you have a weapon that encourages certain types of combat.

Technology changes the world because of what it can do. Magic changes the world because of what it can do, and because of what it requires of you.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying, "Yes, I love to have a lot of very little magical things in my world, such that most villages have someone who knows one or two old rituals passed down through the generations".

Technologies have requirements too. Fossil fuels being the most obvious case. So in a world that did not have fossil fuel deposits - which is quite possible, it would apply to almost all recently terraformed planets - the supply of fuels would be limited to what could be produced and refined from present-day sources such as ethanol from corn (something like this is part of the premise of the Greatwinter Trilogy (https://www.amazon.com/Souls-Great-Machine-Greatwinter-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B008BJ0F7U/ref=pd_sim_351_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=S233M460NB84WV4NWWY5)). Magic requirements tend to be different than technological requirements, but it is usually possible to industrialize them in the same way - though this can be extremely grimdark if magic requires 'blood' or 'sacrifice' or something similar.

The real difference between magic and technology in their ability to apply change is that technology is by nature, consistent. Effectively, technology as we understand the term is dependent upon Uniformitarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism) holding true as a principle of the universe. This is necessary for science, and by extension technological developments that follow from science, to work. If you break uniformitaranism by spontaneously altering the laws of physics for the purposes of fiction then you've crossed the line between science fiction and fantasy.

This is commonly seen with fantasy magic. The most apparent cases are those of religious magic that depend on the active mediation of 'divine' beings. If magic is a gift of the gods, and the gods get mad they can take magic away for no explicable reason. By contrast, magic may well be consistent, in that it represents a set of alternative laws of the fictional universe that can be manipulated and this happens in a consistent way such that it produces results that are repeatable and verifiable, at least within a closed system - D&D has many different planes, magic functions differently in each one, even when casting the same spells, because each represents a different system.

It is at this point that we hit on an important deviation between game design options and narrative design options. Consistency in the operation of magic is irrelevant to world-building for narrative purposes. If I'm writing a novel I can have emotional and fickle gods coming out of the wazoo and magic can be an inexplicable force with no verifiable replication. In fact some of the most famous fantasy stories ever are structured this way. By contrast, if I'm designing a game that's not an option, because it's inherently unfair to the players. If a player performs a magical effect, they expect to get the same result each time - or at least have that result be tied to a legitimate source of randomness such as a die roll. You can't build a system where the GM gets to arbitrarily say if effects succeed or fail (and highly flexible magic systems, like the sphere magic of Mage The Ascension, have a huge problem or putting a massive amount of adjudicatory power into the GMs hands, which has all sorts of issues for play).

And, of course, this has an impact on game settings, because since the game design requires consistent magic that means the people in the setting will experience that magic in a consistent fashion and will be able to react and study it accordingly. At least, so long as the design isn't willing to openly come out and say that the consistency is a compromise may for the purpose of gameplay and not how the universe is expected to work (Star Wars is the best example here. The Force is most assuredly not open to repeatable study and it's incredible fickle, but Star Wars games treat it like it is anyway).

The bottom line is that, if you have a consistent magic system in place in a setting you need to consider the implications as if it were a technology and consider what that might mean. That does not mean you have to embrace the crazy 'magitech' future that might be implied there are workarounds available. The Wheel of Time is a fairly good example. The Age of Legends represents the magitech tippyverse fully embrace of the One Power's capabilities leads to, but the actually stories take place in a post-apocalyptic mess where essential knowledge has been lost and society has developed extremely powerful barriers (with good justification) to prevent it's recovery. What it does mean is that, if your fantasy universe doesn't match the full implications of where the industrialized applications of whatever magic is available then you need a good reason why this is so. The most common reason is apocalypse followed by socialized barriers, which is convenient because it allows the protagonists to recover lost knowledge in time for the epic to unfold.

VoxRationis
2017-09-20, 02:58 AM
At most it would be like the "wonders" of Hero/Heron of Alexandria, mysterious to the layman but not to any person with access to knowledge of how it works. I don't really expect magic to be both useful and "strange".

That's an interesting comparison. The engineers of the classical and Hellenistic periods do make for an interesting parallel with wizards as they are commonly depicted in D&D and certain other fantasy worlds: figures that create works on internally consistent principles and do communicate with one another, but nonetheless are almost wholly inscrutable to the majority of society and whose proficiency in their fields so outstrips that of the rest of the world that they represent actual strategic assets (when you take Syracuse but lose Archimedes in the process, the victory becomes bittersweet). Of course, the Hellenistic period was one of near-continuous change and development, and was by and large pretty unstable—unlike most fantasy settings, I doubt the status quo of the Hellenistic period could have maintained for very long.

Zombimode
2017-09-20, 03:08 AM
Really depends on the setting. Eberron? Magitek.

Peasants don't have Magitek in Eberron.

Necroticplague
2017-09-20, 11:45 AM
Technology changes the world because of what it can do. Magic changes the world because of what it can do, and because of what it requires of you.

Technology also has requirements and sacrifices. They're just different from magical ones.

Vogie
2017-09-20, 01:58 PM
Technology also has requirements and sacrifices. They're just different from magical ones.

Precisely. And both should trickle down to the people at the lowest echelons of society. No one has ever created an entire car for $500 USD, yet $500 cars exist.

If something like a ritual, sacrifice, or ritual sacrifice consistently guarantees a certain outcome, like recovery of illness or a fertile harvest, it will spread as long as the populace has a means to communicate it. That ritual could be a "reduce fever" spell or the administration of white willow bark (which contains the primary component of Aspirin).

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-20, 04:35 PM
Magic is the act of using spells, charms and rituals to invoke supernatural or to effect nature. As both what is supernatural and what is natural are up to the author in case of fictional settings, as are the forms of rituals, charms and spells, we rapidly find out that "magic" in context of fantasy is an empty buzzword. It means whatever arbitrary thing a setting author wants and there is no general case for it.

This is, however, useless for understanding what "feels magical" to the actual people around your table. That feeling is largely based on what in psychology and anthropology is known as "magical thinking". In real life, its primary cause appears to be gaps in causal knowledge filled by associative heuristics. Example: you perform a dance and it subsequently begins to rain. In absence of better knowledge, you come to associate that dance with rain. So now you avoid that dance to avoid rain, or perform it to invoke it. Once a ritual becomes a habit, it is rarely questioned even if no proof of efficacy exists. The act becomes more important than the result and intent is lost in it.

Other features of magical thinking are symbolic association and law of contagion. The former is the belief that similar things are linked and can affect each other through that similarity. Related is the belief that thoughts, emotions and feelings have direct impact on reality. Law of contagion is the belief that things which have been in contact will remain connected. An well-known example which captures all these elements is the Voodoo Doll: thoughts and actions targeted at a doll crafted in the likeness of a person, containing a part of that person, will have direct impact on that person.

How common or mundane an object is, is not really relevant for triggering the feeling of magic. Another well-known example: dice. There are few more common and mundane objects in gaming. Yet, due to a combination of their random nature, people's inability to understand probability and pitfalls of human intuitive heuristics, it is just as common for dice to give rise to weird superstitions.

There are also artificial objects which were made to appeal to human intuition and consequently are easy triggers for magical thinking. Example: graphical computer interfaces. The symbol of the text editor, invokes the power of the text editor. Similarly, it is not a coincidence contemporary people tend to draw parallels between programming and spellcasting - in both cases you are using symbolic words to cause real effects. Add to this generally poor understanding of why and how computers actually work, and it shouldn't be surprising that computers too, despite being common, are frequent targets of superstition.

Based on the above, it should be also easy to see why too rigorous or too revealing fictional versions of "magic" cease to feel so. Once causality between events is fully understood, and especially if it breaks from symbolic association, law of contagion and the idea that thoughts have direct effect on the world, the "magic goes away". It is exactly the same phenomena of ceasing to be impressed by sleight of hand once you know how its done. It's not a coincidence that in real life, some well-known skeptics of the supernatural happen to be stage magicians. After all, such position requires keen understanding of magical thinking, how to manipulate it, and how little the real events resemble the "magical" narrative.

The takeaway should be that it is obtuse to use "magic" as a catch-all term for any breaks from reality, and even worse to pretend it's an explanation. Trying to cram things which don't have to be related under the same umbrella can, ironically, itself be example of magical thinking.

(My own setting reflects the above. As side-effect, pretty much no-one who thinks they know what they're doing calls what they do "magic".)

Drakevarg
2017-09-20, 06:05 PM
Related to the above, my general rule for magic is that if it's just "different science," it's not really magic. My own setting runs more-or-less along the lines of antiquated natural philosophy, so things like miasma theory and the notion that plague can be spread by the evil eye are literally true. By the same notion, if it's just a simple fact of life that the right words, gestures, and ingredients in the right combination will conjure a fireball, that's not magic. It's just a thing that happens in this world.

Part of the thing that makes magic what it is, is that it doesn't follow the rules. Magic is alive and if you take it for granted it will either abandon you or make your life hell. Which isn't terribly compatible with archetypes like D&D's wizards, who are basically their universe's version of scientists wearing snuggies, or indeed Vancian magic in general. But that's a completely different topic. Point is, that if magic can be safely and reliably used by anyone then it's not really magic, just alternate-universe science.

InvisibleBison
2017-09-20, 06:52 PM
Part of the thing that makes magic what it is, is that it doesn't follow the rules. Magic is alive and if you take it for granted it will either abandon you or make your life hell. Which isn't terribly compatible with archetypes like D&D's wizards, who are basically their universe's version of scientists wearing snuggies, or indeed Vancian magic in general. But that's a completely different topic. Point is, that if magic can be safely and reliably used by anyone then it's not really magic, just alternate-universe science.

But if magic is unsafe and unreliable, why would anyone use it?

Drakevarg
2017-09-20, 06:56 PM
But if magic is unsafe and unreliable, why would anyone use it?

Because they consider the power to be worth the risks? Because they were born to it and ignoring it is just as dangerous as using it for them? Plenty of reasons. Magic shouldn't be appealing to the masses. It should scare the crap out of them.

Necroticplague
2017-09-20, 08:28 PM
The takeaway should be that it is obtuse to use "magic" as a catch-all term for any breaks from reality, and even worse to pretend it's an explanation. Trying to cram things which don't have to be related under the same umbrella can, ironically, itself be example of magical thinking.

(My own setting reflects the above. As side-effect, pretty much no-one who thinks they know what they're doing calls what they do "magic".)
This kinda reminds me of a wecomic I've read called Unsounded. While they do have supernatural manipulation that most settings would call magic, they very insistently call it pymary instead. The reason the author gives is basically along the same lines: 'magic' implies something unknown or mystical. Their spells are a common fact of life, and very rules-based, so it fails on both accounts. Thus, it's not really magic and shouldn't be called it.


But if magic is unsafe and unreliable, why would anyone use it?

Unreliable just means that, buy it's nature, if you keep at it enough, you'll eventually get something even better than what you wanted (after a long string of failed attempts). Risky just means that it's gonna attract a very specific type of person. Thus, why wizards tend to be power-hungry nutters. It's because the main people for whom magic is attractive are those with a casual disregard for danger, a dogged persistence to just keep trying until they get it right, or both. Thus, spellcasters being feared and hated as well: just by practicing magic, they're showing they have low regard for consequences, and are thus dangerous to be around by their personality alone.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-20, 08:39 PM
Magic is the act of using spells, charms and rituals to invoke supernatural or to effect nature. As both what is supernatural and what is natural are up to the author in case of fictional settings, as are the forms of rituals, charms and spells, we rapidly find out that "magic" in context of fantasy is an empty buzzword. It means whatever arbitrary thing a setting author wants and there is no general case for it.

This is, however, useless for understanding what "feels magical" to the actual people around your table. That feeling is largely based on what in psychology and anthropology is known as "magical thinking". In real life, its primary cause appears to be gaps in causal knowledge filled by associative heuristics. Example: you perform a dance and it subsequently begins to rain. In absence of better knowledge, you come to associate that dance with rain. So now you avoid that dance to avoid rain, or perform it to invoke it. Once a ritual becomes a habit, it is rarely questioned even if no proof of efficacy exists. The act becomes more important than the result and intent is lost in it.

Other features of magical thinking are symbolic association and law of contagion. The former is the belief that similar things are linked and can affect each other through that similarity. Related is the belief that thoughts, emotions and feelings have direct impact on reality. Law of contagion is the belief that things which have been in contact will remain connected. An well-known example which captures all these elements is the Voodoo Doll: thoughts and actions targeted at a doll crafted in the likeness of a person, containing a part of that person, will have direct impact on that person.

How common or mundane an object is, is not really relevant for triggering the feeling of magic. Another well-known example: dice. There are few more common and mundane objects in gaming. Yet, due to a combination of their random nature, people's inability to understand probability and pitfalls of human intuitive heuristics, it is just as common for dice to give rise to weird superstitions.

There are also artificial objects which were made to appeal to human intuition and consequently are easy triggers for magical thinking. Example: graphical computer interfaces. The symbol of the text editor, invokes the power of the text editor. Similarly, it is not a coincidence contemporary people tend to draw parallels between programming and spellcasting - in both cases you are using symbolic words to cause real effects. Add to this generally poor understanding of why and how computers actually work, and it shouldn't be surprising that computers too, despite being common, are frequent targets of superstition.

Based on the above, it should be also easy to see why too rigorous or too revealing fictional versions of "magic" cease to feel so. Once causality between events is fully understood, and especially if it breaks from symbolic association, law of contagion and the idea that thoughts have direct effect on the world, the "magic goes away". It is exactly the same phenomena of ceasing to be impressed by sleight of hand once you know how its done. It's not a coincidence that in real life, some well-known skeptics of the supernatural happen to be stage magicians. After all, such position requires keen understanding of magical thinking, how to manipulate it, and how little the real events resemble the "magical" narrative.

The takeaway should be that it is obtuse to use "magic" as a catch-all term for any breaks from reality, and even worse to pretend it's an explanation. Trying to cram things which don't have to be related under the same umbrella can, ironically, itself be example of magical thinking.

(My own setting reflects the above. As side-effect, pretty much no-one who thinks they know what they're doing calls what they do "magic".)


Related to the above, my general rule for magic is that if it's just "different science," it's not really magic. My own setting runs more-or-less along the lines of antiquated natural philosophy, so things like miasma theory and the notion that plague can be spread by the evil eye are literally true. By the same notion, if it's just a simple fact of life that the right words, gestures, and ingredients in the right combination will conjure a fireball, that's not magic. It's just a thing that happens in this world.

Part of the thing that makes magic what it is, is that it doesn't follow the rules. Magic is alive and if you take it for granted it will either abandon you or make your life hell. Which isn't terribly compatible with archetypes like D&D's wizards, who are basically their universe's version of scientists wearing snuggies, or indeed Vancian magic in general. But that's a completely different topic. Point is, that if magic can be safely and reliably used by anyone then it's not really magic, just alternate-universe science.


But if magic is unsafe and unreliable, why would anyone use it?


Because they consider the power to be worth the risks? Because they were born to it and ignoring it is just as dangerous as using it for them? Plenty of reasons. Magic shouldn't be appealing to the masses. It should scare the crap out of them.


I think the short answer is, a lot of people want "magic" to feel like it does in the real world, but actually work.

Which is hard, because to a large extent it feels like it does in the real world because it doesn't work.

Mechalich
2017-09-20, 09:35 PM
I think the short answer is, a lot of people want "magic" to feel like it does in the real world, but actually work.

Which is hard, because to a large extent it feels like it does in the real world because it doesn't work.

Well, consistent magic, even at surprisingly low power levels, distorts worlds and such distortion either lacks verisimilitude and puts pressure on the suspension of disbelief, or makes it so that you end up detailing a bizarro world that becomes far enough removed from the standard human condition that it becomes difficult to tell effective stories in it. This can happen with sufficiently advanced technology too, for instance, in the Culture universe the human characters are largely window dressing - their power is so dwarfed by that of the Minds that it massively hinders their ability to do anything important - yet the stories must include them in order to possess a functional frame of reference for the reader. The Hydrogen Sonata might be the best example of this, where Vyr Cossont gets dragged around the galaxy at extreme length and risk primarily so she can serve as a witness. I love the Culture books, but it is not reasonable to expect the average GM to be a storyteller in the class of the late Iain M Banks.

So people find ways to limit magic.
1. Limit Ability: the ability to use magic is only available to those with some inborn or otherwise obtained trait (ex. you have to be born Force-sensitive to learn to use the Force in Star Wars)
2. Training Barriers: magic is hard to learn and most people who make the attempt to study it will fail, possibly losing their lives in the process (ex. in the Wheel of Time, the majority of women who study to become Aes Sedai fail the process and are put out of the tower with rules against them using whatever bits they have learned).
3. Consequences: use of magic may come with some sort of limiting cost, ranging from the minor to the crippling (ex. in the Magister Trilogy by C.S. Friedman, witch's drain their own life force to use magic, resulting in their inevitable and usually swift deaths when they begin to practice).
4. Consistency: magic may be a fickle force that does not regularly produce results for any number of reasons. This could be entirely mundane in nature - if your magic is alchemy and you have to get your mixtures exactly right for them to work, a character may screw up a lot in the same way college chemistry students do - or it could be due to the natural of the supernatural forces that serve as the source of mystic energy.

Interestingly, all of these approaches have difficulties from a game design perspective. Limiting ability only works if you're willing to declare magic an NPC only ability. It doesn't matter how rare Jedi may be in the Galaxy far, far away, if the game lets you play as them, then an all Jedi party will happen. Limiting training rarely works, because characters usually start with their abilities at least at the level of functional, and if the GM makes advancement conditional then you create an at-the-table issue (for example, in Mage the Ascension, characters are supposed to go through seekings in order to raise there Arete score, which controls much of their overall power, having certain members of a party pass their seekings while others fail is...troubling). If you try to limit magic via consequences, it has to be something that the players will care about (so moral consequences are pointless), can function effectively within the game timeframe, and matters mechanically. Good luck with that. And if you play with consistency, in terms of having defined effects not necessarily producing a defined result, you effectively turn your magic system into freeform magic tea party.

Effectively, all the impetus towards making a robustly designed and conflict-minimizing magic system for a game run counter to making a magic system that retains wonder and mystery and doesn't overly distort a fantasy setting.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-21, 05:19 AM
But if magic is unsafe and unreliable, why would anyone use it?



Unreliable just means that, buy it's nature, if you keep at it enough, you'll eventually get something even better than what you wanted (after a long string of failed attempts). Risky just means that it's gonna attract a very specific type of person. Thus, why wizards tend to be power-hungry nutters. It's because the main people for whom magic is attractive are those with a casual disregard for danger, a dogged persistence to just keep trying until they get it right, or both. Thus, spellcasters being feared and hated as well: just by practicing magic, they're showing they have low regard for consequences, and are thus dangerous to be around by their personality alone.

I wonder if either of you realized you might as well be talking about gamblers or various other thrill seekers?

I mean, why people do anything is a decent question. But you're asking your question against a backdrop of reality where people do unsafe and unreliable things all the time. Being unreliable and unsafe are neither unique to "magic" nor its defining elements. There are plenty of mundane, everyday things which share those qualities, yet are still done by people. Ultimately it may be that people just aren't very good at assessing risks.

---

Now, as a setting building advice, if you want consistent, safe magic that still feels like magic, you'll do okay if you manage to tick the following boxes:

1) thoughts and emotions impact reality: you have to have specific intent and state of mind to do magic.
2) Law of symbolic association is followed: symbol of a thing can affect the thing itself and vice versa.
3) Law of contagion is followed: things which have been in physical contact remain causally connected, you can use part of a thing to affect the whole thing.
4) magic lacks ontological inertia: magical objects and effects only exist as long as the magician, or possibly the target, can focus their intent on that thing existing.

Or, even easier, you can cheat and replace the above or add to them:

5) magic never originates from natural creatures, only supernatural ones via social contract. This is a variation if "only NPCs are allowed magic". PCs only have access to magic when and where they can convince a particular sort of NPC to do the dirty work for them.

If some of those sound familiar, it's because D&D and, by extension most other fantasy RPGs are full of these elements. (Not the least because they rip off real life sources with such elements.) 1) through 4) are all over arcane magic. 5) is warlocks, clerics etc. in a nutshell.

Where existing RPGs, especially d20 D&D, often fail is that they don't stick to these guns. Which is a shame for D&D and its kin especially, because Vancian magic would otherwise be a good framework for this kind of magic. Vancian wizards aren't really scientist of basic laws of magic, they are collectors of the weird. Spells in that framework are functional black boxes which tell you what they do and how to use them, but nothing about why or how they work the way they do. Within a Vancian system, it's easy to give players access to whatever arbitrary set of "magical" abilities fit your setting, without giving them too much information of the "true nature of magic" or what have you.

Where players of existing games screw up is conflating "unknown limits" with "no limits" via presuming that the wizards in a game must have such information even if neither the system nor the GM give them such. It's the "But my character is smarter than me, so..." argument writ large.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-09-21, 11:02 AM
Inconsistent magic* just gives up too much, in my view. I know it's a bit of an abstract point, but you can't give up the consistency of one natural process (i.e. magic) without compromising the consistency of the entire universe, and I don't want to play in the Far Realm^. That means there will have to be systematicity in magic, and that implies people (i.e. wizards) will explore the system, and use it to achieve specific results. If that is science, well, that's fine, isn't it?


*Magic defined as that thing that is outside the rules of its universe, rather than that thing (force) that is different from (not present in) our own universe.
^To be clear: my headcanon of the Far Realm. I think the Far Realm is canonically consistent, just in a weird way.

Drascin
2017-09-21, 12:45 PM
It depends on the kind of setting I'm making. But generally speaking, if I'm going for fantasy, then there is going to be soft magic for most people. Both working and not.

For example, animism is a common feature, with peasants learning various superstitions to beseech the spirits of things to do stuff. In general, humans are really good at trying to find how to interact with the world, so you get exorcists warding against ghosts with salt and holy water, or the village scribe also having learned some small useful magic that he uses to help the community, and big rituals in the holidays. And while a bunch of this is of course going to be placebo hogwash, a bunch of this is going to legitimately work.

Necroticplague
2017-09-21, 12:47 PM
Inconsistent magic* just gives up too much, in my view. I know it's a bit of an abstract point, but you can't give up the consistency of one natural process (i.e. magic) without compromising the consistency of the entire universe, and I don't want to play in the Far Realm^.


*Magic defined as that thing that is outside the rules of its universe, rather than that thing (force) that is different from (not present in) our own universe.

Magic isn't a natural process. Your own provided definition of magic even has that being true (as natural processes are only that occur within the rules of a universe. Anything outside it is supernatural, not natural). So there's no reason compromising the consistency of magic has to compromise the consistency of the world, because magic isn't a part of the natural world.

Nifft
2017-09-21, 12:55 PM
Magic isn't a natural process. (...) because magic isn't a part of the natural world.

Druid Police: "There he is! Get him!"

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-21, 01:42 PM
Inconsistent magic* just gives up too much, in my view. I know it's a bit of an abstract point, but you can't give up the consistency of one natural process (i.e. magic) without compromising the consistency of the entire universe.

It depends on the source of inconsistency.

Consider people. A person can be notoriously inconsistent. The low-level processes that give them shape might theoretically be perfectly consistent, but the operations and motives of the person's mind are so many layers removed from those that no-one is really able to predict their behaviour from first principles. Hence the need for heuristics, guesswork, manipulation, persuasion, trust, faith and sciences which deal with high-level phenomena directly, without trying to reduce them to lower-level principles.

So when magic originates from other conscious beings (see 5) above), it can be highly inconsistent without compromising consistency of the universe. The inconsistency isn't due to laws of nature being inconsistent, it's because you exist in a lopsided contract with a more powerfull being and are subject to its whim. You can certainly try to make science out of that, but you are working with highly limited sample size without ability to set proper control groups, across a cognitive gap which may be both immense and not favorable in your direction. It's homologous to a baboon trying to perform psychology on humans.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-09-21, 02:06 PM
Magic isn't a natural process. Your own provided definition of magic even has that being true (as natural processes are only that occur within the rules of a universe. Anything outside it is supernatural, not natural).
Uh. You misunderstand me. In my view, magic should be a 'natural' process (consistent, understandable through its regularities). It is the difference between the structure of our universe and of a fictional universe, as you see in the second definition in my footnote. I leave open the possibility that certain magic is not 'natural' (the first part of the footnote), but only to say that I do not like it, exactly because of the consistency issue.


So there's no reason compromising the consistency of magic has to compromise the consistency of the world, because magic isn't a part of the natural world.
What. You are allowing something explicitly not structured (consistent) to interfere with your consistent world. Of course it's going to ruin the consistency. For example, if you delete a star 10 billion years ago (violating some conversation laws), you would thoroughly ruin the ability to reconstruct the evolution of that part of the cosmos. And of course, that's still a too-comprehensible example.


It depends on the source of inconsistency.

Consider people. A person can be notoriously inconsistent. The low-level processes that give them shape might theoretically be perfectly consistent, but the operations and motives of the person's mind are so many layers removed from those that no-one is really able to predict their behaviour from first principles. Hence the need for heuristics, guesswork, manipulation, persuasion, trust, faith and sciences which deal with high-level phenomena directly, without trying to reduce them to lower-level principles.

So when magic originates from other conscious beings (see 5) above), it can be highly inconsistent without compromising consistency of the universe. The inconsistency isn't due to laws of nature being inconsistent, it's because you exist in a lopsided contract with a more powerfull being and are subject to its whim. You can certainly try to make science out of that, but you are working with highly limited sample size without ability to set proper control groups, across a cognitive gap which may be both immense and not favorable in your direction. It's homologous to a baboon trying to perform psychology on humans.
People are not inconsistent in the sense I mean. As you say, they are chaotic--too complicated to predict from first principles. However, as any stage magician can tell you, people are predictable enough from their high-level behaviour (which is practical for a lot of other things, too).

You can come up with a form of animism that involves spirits that are virtually or totally impossible to comprehend for your human analogue. However, I would assume that the relevant spirits themselves do comprehend one another, and I would assume that--like baboons can steal or beg for food quite easily--it is possible to manipulate even incomprehensible spirits in predictable ways.

Drakevarg
2017-09-21, 03:32 PM
--it is possible to manipulate even incomprehensible spirits in predictable ways.

Anyone who thinks that people (as in individuals, mobs are significantly more predictable) can be manipulated in completely predictable ways is just waiting for their luck to run out. That's a good way to find yourself bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, and that's just for entities that can't literally rewrite reality around you.

"Unreliable magic" isn't the same thing as say wild magic, where you cast as a spell and you have basically no idea what'll actually happen. Unreliable magic can easily mean that it works fine 9 times out of 10, but if it feels like you're taking it for granted it'll suddenly bite you right when you need it most.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-09-21, 03:56 PM
Anyone who thinks that people (as in individuals, mobs are significantly more predictable) can be manipulated in completely predictable ways is just waiting for their luck to run out. That's a good way to find yourself bleeding out in a ditch somewhere, and that's just for entities that can't literally rewrite reality around you.

"Unreliable magic" isn't the same thing as say wild magic, where you cast as a spell and you have basically no idea what'll actually happen. Unreliable magic can easily mean that it works fine 9 times out of 10, but if it feels like you're taking it for granted it'll suddenly bite you right when you need it most.
Unreliable magic is fine, technology is unreliable too, to a greater or lesser extent. My point was about inconsistent magic. It's probably because of the mixture of algebra and metaphysics courses I've been taking, but I can't see the word '(in)consistent' without having a fit, and it's affected my ideas about magic a bit. Sorry about that, I'll leave you guys alone now :smalltongue:.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-21, 04:18 PM
The setting I'm currently developing does the following: the ability to use magic requires one to be descended from the fae and for the talent to manifest (it's essentially a recessive trait). If one has the ability to use magic then they can go into a trance and commune with the spirits, trying to get them to do something for them. Knowledge of different spells represents the ability to convince the spirits to affect their patron objects in a certain way.

For the record magical healing involves convincing someone's soul to heal their body in the current draft. Nobody's quite sure why souls don't do so quickly normally, and so most spellcasters are reluctant to heal someone who's only got minor wounds (defined as having at least half your hp), and most people don't consider such wounds a reason for magical healing.

Roughly a generation ago a discovery was made, these spirits and souls are not intelligent. As in they don't think, they seem to only act as compelled, and magic involves enforcing your will on the spirit to get it to move. This is why magic has always been mentally taxing, even for simple effects.

Those in the know are now researching new magic, trying to find out what a spirit's limits are but the knowledge has broken some people's religious beliefs. They were told that their soul would be rewarded in the afterlife, but it's not their soul but rather their body that's conscious. Some people are even trying to work out a way to move consciousness to their soul so that death will not be the end.

However, because of how rare the ability to use magic is (an estimated 1% of the population has it, but not everybody who has it is discovered because nobody really has the time to test every child) most villages will generally get their magic from a wandering priestess or druid, which generally consists of asking for a couple of diseases to be cured and crops to be blessed, magic is nowhere near powerful enough to be used in warfare (although having a few magicians on your side is still useful).

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-21, 04:31 PM
The setting I'm currently developing does the following: the ability to use magic requires one to be descended from the fae and for the talent to manifest (it's essentially a recessive trait). If one has the ability to use magic then they can go into a trance and commune with the spirits, trying to get them to do something for them. Knowledge of different spells represents the ability to convince the spirits to affect their patron objects in a certain way.

For the record magical healing involves convincing someone's soul to heal their body in the current draft. Nobody's quite sure why souls don't do so quickly normally, and so most spellcasters are reluctant to heal someone who's only got minor wounds (defined as having at least half your hp), and most people don't consider such wounds a reason for magical healing.

Roughly a generation ago a discovery was made, these spirits and souls are not intelligent. As in they don't think, they seem to only act as compelled, and magic involves enforcing your will on the spirit to get it to move. This is why magic has always been mentally taxing, even for simple effects.

Those in the know are now researching new magic, trying to find out what a spirit's limits are but the knowledge has broken some people's religious beliefs. They were told that their soul would be rewarded in the afterlife, but it's not their soul but rather their body that's conscious. Some people are even trying to work out a way to move consciousness to their soul so that death will not be the end.

However, because of how rare the ability to use magic is (an estimated 1% of the population has it, but not everybody who has it is discovered because nobody really has the time to test every child) most villages will generally get their magic from a wandering priestess or druid, which generally consists of asking for a couple of diseases to be cured and crops to be blessed, magic is nowhere near powerful enough to be used in warfare (although having a few magicians on your side is still useful).

I like that. It's got some flavor.

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-21, 06:03 PM
People are not inconsistent in the sense I mean. As you say, they are chaotic--too complicated to predict from first principles. However, as any stage magician can tell you, people are predictable enough from their high-level behaviour (which is practical for a lot of other things, too).

I do not materiallt disagree. I will however point out that in case of a stage magician, information asymmetry and usually the cognitive gap are in their favor.

Under 5), it's the other way around. The supernatural creatures are performing a magic trick on the magician and its the magician who is forced to wonder "how the Hell did they do that?"


You can come up with a form of animism that involves spirits that are virtually or totally impossible to comprehend for your human analogue. However, I would assume that the relevant spirits themselves do comprehend one another, and I would assume that--like baboons can steal or beg for food quite easily--it is possible to manipulate even incomprehensible spirits in predictable ways.

What the supernatural creatures think of each other is not helpfull to the human, just like what humans think of humans is rarely helpfull or even known to baboons. And while baboons have limited ability to manipulate and benefit from humans, they hardly can be said to have a science about it. In fact, baboons and other animals, such as pigeons, have been demonstrated to fall victim to magical thinking in regards to human behaviour, just like humans fall victim to magical thinking in regards to uncontrollable natural events.

Example: a food automat is set up by humans. It ejects food pellets when a button is pressed. Animal presses button, gets treat. Soon it learns to associate pressing the button with gaining food.

However, now the humans change the automat to eject pellets after the button is pushed a random number of times. At first, animal is confused. Then animal notices, last time the automat ejected food, there was a stick next to it. So next time, it will see that there is a stick, and if food is ejected, it will then always put a stick there.

But wait! At some point the automat does not eject food even when the stick is there. Again animal is confused. Then it notices, last time it got food, its was also scratching its nose. So now it will add scratching its nose to the ritual before pressing the button...

This can go on for quite a while. Even with something like pigeons, I've heard the rituals can get quite intricate.

From human point of view, there may be a perfectly good reason for all of this. The automat's function is perfectly consistent within its random parameters. From the animal point of view, some ineffable force is screwing around with reality and it is trying to figure out the right set of motions to control this phenomenom.

And one day, the humans take away their automat and kill all the animals. The animals rarely see this coming.

Under 5), humans occupy a homologous position in comparison to the supernatural. Humans may wear fancy robes, chant fancy words and wave around sticks to amuse the supernatural in hopes of getting something nice in return, and they may even succeed. Maybe they can sneak into the supernatural creature's house and steal its stuff. In the short term, they may enjoy some predictable prosperity. But they are always at risk of all of that going away because the supernatural changed its mind.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-21, 06:48 PM
I do not materiallt disagree. I will however point out that in case of a stage magician, information asymmetry and usually the cognitive gap are in their favor.

Under 5), it's the other way around. The supernatural creatures are performing a magic trick on the magician and its the magician who is forced to wonder "how the Hell did they do that?"



What the supernatural creatures think of each other is not helpfull to the human, just like what humans think of humans is rarely helpfull or even known to baboons. And while baboons have limited ability to manipulate and benefit from humans, they hardly can be said to have a science about it. In fact, baboons and other animals, such as pigeons, have been demonstrated to fall victim to magical thinking in regards to human behaviour, just like humans fall victim to magical thinking in regards to uncontrollable natural events.

Example: a food automat is set up by humans. It ejects food pellets when a button is pressed. Animal presses button, gets treat. Soon it learns to associate pressing the button with gaining food.

However, now the humans change the automat to eject pellets after the button is pushed a random number of times. At first, animal is confused. Then animal notices, last time the automat ejected food, there was a stick next to it. So next time, it will see that there is a stick, and if food is ejected, it will then always put a stick there.

But wait! At some point the automat does not eject food even when the stick is there. Again animal is confused. Then it notices, last time it got food, its was also scratching its nose. So now it will add scratching its nose to the ritual before pressing the button...

This can go on for quite a while. Even with something like pigeons, I've heard the rituals can get quite intricate.

From human point of view, there may be a perfectly good reason for all of this. The automat's function is perfectly consistent within its random parameters. From the animal point of view, some ineffable force is screwing around with reality and it is trying to figure out the right set of motions to control this phenomenom.

And one day, the humans take away their automat and kill all the animals. The animals rarely see this coming.

Under 5), humans occupy a homologous position in comparison to the supernatural. Humans may wear fancy robes, chant fancy words and wave around sticks to amuse the supernatural in hopes of getting something nice in return, and they may even succeed. Maybe they can sneak into the supernatural creature's house and steal its stuff. In the short term, they may enjoy some predictable prosperity. But they are always at risk of all of that going away because the supernatural changed its mind.

Doesn't even that much depend on how the setting treats and details "the supernatural"?

Frozen_Feet
2017-09-21, 06:53 PM
For sure. As noted, what the supernatural is, is arbitrary decision by a setting author.

This is one version aimed towards having some predictable magic available while still retaining the feel of magic, as noted earlier.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-21, 08:23 PM
For sure. As noted, what the supernatural is, is arbitrary decision by a setting author.

This is one version aimed towards having some predictable magic available while still retaining the feel of magic, as noted earlier.

Yeah. Re-read from several posts back and in the context of the whole discussion that stands out a lot more.

I miss nested quotes.

Necroticplague
2017-09-21, 10:57 PM
For sure. As noted, what the supernatural is, is arbitrary decision by a setting author.

This is one version aimed towards having some predictable magic available while still retaining the feel of magic, as noted earlier.Yeah. Re-read from several posts back and in the context of the whole discussion that stands out a lot more.

I miss nested quotes.
What'ya mean, miss them? They're still around.

Pleh
2017-09-21, 11:57 PM
I would point out there there is a difference between magic that is unreliable and magic that is unpredictable.

Unreliable magic often fails to produce the expected effect a user attempts to invoke. This can be due to a conscious "will" of magic Force or a random, mindless entropic effect (etc).

Unpredictable magic merely seems unreliable due to a reliable process that is not reliably understood (and possibly cannot be understood past a certain degree, similar to quantum uncertainty).

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-22, 05:49 AM
I like that. It's got some flavor.

Thank you, half of the flavour came out of the system I'm using (you need a certain trait to use magic and it takes up the same 'pool' as trying harder at any task), half from wanting to play around with the idea of souls/spirits.




For sure. As noted, what the supernatural is, is arbitrary decision by a setting author.

This is one version aimed towards having some predictable magic available while still retaining the feel of magic, as noted earlier.

Yeah. Re-read from several posts back and in the context of the whole discussion that stands out a lot more.

I miss nested quotes.

What'ya mean, miss them? They're still around.

A bit harder to set up though, I rarely bother anymore.

Max_Killjoy
2017-09-22, 06:21 AM
What'ya mean, miss them? They're still around.

Forums generally used to do it automatically.

Even Usenet did it.

Now most forums require posters to consciously take time to manually do it, and most don't, so 99% of posts aren't nested.

Nifft
2017-09-22, 06:45 AM
What'ya mean, miss them? They're still around.

Forums generally used to do it automatically.

Even Usenet did it.

Now most forums require posters to consciously take time to manually do it, and most don't, so 99% of posts aren't nested.

"If you're the 1% who nest quotes manually, nest this!"

Logosloki
2017-09-22, 08:39 AM
I don't have a singular preference, I prefer that the magic is internally consistent with the setting.

The three I do like the most though are: There is almost no magic at all so it isn't just the peasants not getting any magic and what magic there is is either tied up into elaborate rituals or very low level in terms of magical power, or if it does have a lot of bang then it has the shadow of a monkey paw gripping it tightly; Low level magic is easy to come by and almost every thorp at least has some level 1 dabbler but there are barriers to magic (study and practice mostly) which act as natural speed bumps to development leading to a setting (in D&D terms) which has about one in ten with some cantrips and level one spells, one in one hundred with level two, one in a thousand with level three, etc.; Magic is just a fancy way to say technology but requires specific materials and finished products to utilitse.

In terms of game settings I am willing to believe the chosen narrative for its simplicity to the storyteller but do like it if the players have magic that the world is also coloured by magic as well.

90sMusic
2017-09-23, 06:14 PM
The thing is... Peasants basically exist for society to be built on top of. They are the workers that plant the food, grow the food, harvest the food, to feed the rich and powerful as well as each other. They're the ones that fight the wars when the rich and powerful get mad at each other. They're the ones who build everything, most of which is built just as further infrastructure to maintain their productivity, but all with the intent of benefiting the rich and powerful.

It works great in a standard medieval world where all the peasants have liege lords who are loyal to some monarch and it all works and makes sense.

But when you get into a state of affairs where everyone has magic... Or even technology... The system breaks down. If every individual becomes inherently powerful, it becomes more difficult to control them. You would no longer have monarchies and things of that nature, it would all shift to a more democratic way of existing because if any single person could potentially destroy an entire city, it causes a lot of political problems.

What would be the purpose of peasants if you could snap your fingers to create food? To build castles? Why fight over land or resources when you can simply create everything you need and even make a flying castle in the sky where there is no limit to the space available to you?

The world would devolve into life on that spaceship in the movie WALL-E. Everyone would have all their needs and wants catered to by magic and just become fat, useless, and stupid. There would be no reason to go out and do anything because life is essentially a struggle to survive, and once you are surviving you struggle to stay on top and to get the things you want. If it's no longer a fight, no longer a struggle, you become weaker as a person and after generations of it you become weaker as a species. It's kind of the issue we have in the real world now with the younger generations growing up having never been exposed to war beyond vague notions of it on TV once in a while, but they make no sacrifices, they don't have to fight themselves, they just live in an ever more indulgent and increasingly instant-gratification oriented society.

I feel like a culture with all people who are inherently very magical would end up being sort of embodying a sort of self-created paradise where nothing has anymore meaning or purpose to it. It wouldn't be a good place for an adventure, at least if it was halfway realistic.

You can try to hybridize it a bit and make golems or spells that handle mundane tasks like growing crops, but again, if you had that stuff why have peasants in the first place? Your automatons could handle all tasks for you.

About the coolest thing you could do is have society splinter into those who can use magic and those who can't and have those who can use magic evolve beyond most worldly needs while everyone else basically lives in squalor and barely able to survive off the limited resources that aren't being consumed by the far more powerful group. Kind of like if robotic automation continues at it's current pace in the world and 90% of jobs are lost to machines and computers because they're so much better than people could ever hope to be at manually doing any given task. What happens when you have no other skills except mundane laborer and those jobs are no longer available?

I've already considered eventualities of various things in a world with magic. For instance, medicine will never develop and learning anatomy for healing purposes would be pointless because why bother using mundane methods to very slowly heal someone over days, weeks, months, when magic can do so instantly? Even to the point of bringing people back from the dead and regrowing lost limbs. Medical technology wouldn't develop because there is zero need for it, conventional doctors wouldn't exist. And you could try to make the argument of "well what if you don't have access to magic somewhere". It is still far more efficient for both time and resources to get a wand of cure wounds and train on how to use that briefly than spending years learning human anatomy and the effects of various herbs.

Even if you lived in a society where most peasants couldn't use magic and instead bought magical devices to make life easier, it would mirror more of the modern world and the technological devices we use today. We're still getting to the point in the real world where more and more jobs are being replaced by robots who can do the same thing better, faster, and cheaper. Magic-tech in such a world end in the same inevitabilities of our own world which is eventually no one will work anymore and either everyone lives on some type of welfare or they simply let people starve unless they're part of the extreme rich minority.

Why make a magical device to make farming, milling, or cooking easier when you can make a magic device that simply create food?

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-23, 07:42 PM
Since people are assuming more powerful or versatile magic than will always exist.

For what a society might evolve into work weaker, more difficult, but still versatile magic Eclipse Phase might be a good starring point. The characters in song have evolved technology to the point where being decent at anything from fought to surgery is a quick Google starch, anything can be made by nano fabrication, and some habitats do live a low scarcity existence (it'll be post scarcity once transhumanity either gets is act together or develops interstellar travel to the point it's actual feasible without alien wormholes they have trouble controlling).

Here's the thing that bugs me about people disliking magitech or the magical industrial revolution, in a world with magic in it magic is going to be a science. Maybe it won't be called magic, maybe it's called aetheric manipulation, but it's magic. Eventually people will study that magic, find out how it works, and exploit it. They'll discover the laws that magic, and use those laws to make better spells and magic items (assuming they are features of this magic). Even if magic isn't omnipotent it well be exploited, and those without it well try to come up with a way to level the playing field, whether anti magic, borrowed magic, or plain old technology.

Heck, there are systems like Victoriana where magical attacks only give the benefit of running off your magic skill. If you have the firearms skill it is quicker, less tiring, and just as deadly to let lose with a pistol (although magic has some amazing less lethal options, which technology doesn't really get).

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-23, 07:53 PM
Since people are assuming more powerful or versatile magic than will always exist.

For what a society might evolve into work weaker, more difficult, but still versatile magic Eclipse Phase might be a good starring point. The characters in song have evolved technology to the point where being decent at anything from fought to surgery is a quick Google starch, anything can be made by nano fabrication, and some habitats do live a low scarcity existence (it'll be post scarcity once transhumanity either gets is act together or develops interstellar travel to the point it's actual feasible without alien wormholes they have trouble controlling).

Here's the thing that bugs me about people disliking magitech or the magical industrial revolution, in a world with magic in it magic is going to be a science. Maybe it won't be called magic, maybe it's called aetheric manipulation, but it's magic. Eventually people will study that magic, find out how it works, and exploit it. They'll discover the laws that magic, and use those laws to make better spells and magic items (assuming they are features of this magic). Even if magic isn't omnipotent it well be exploited, and those without it well try to come up with a way to level the playing field, whether anti magic, borrowed magic, or plain old technology.

Heck, there are systems like Victoriana where magical attacks only give the benefit of running off your magic skill. If you have the firearms skill it is quicker, less tiring, and just as deadly to let lose with a pistol (although magic has some amazing less lethal options, which technology doesn't really get).

The bold section is a huge and unproven assumption. What if magic doesn't obey laws (at least not ones mortals can comprehend)? What if those laws it does obey are ever shifting and fickle? What if magic itself is intelligent and doesn't like to be industrialized? What if there are active gods in charge of magic who would rather things stay about the same? What if magic disappears if you try to understand it? All of these are possible setting elements. Why is "magic is just science we haven't discovered yet" the only valid setting?

For the record, I'm not fundamentally opposed to magitech or magical industrial revolutions. My own setting has had time periods where that was in the offing. Ended by people doing stupid things (like unleashing magical nukes that cut sections of the material plane adrift in time or like ordering a relic of the creator god to destroy itself by consuming all ambient magic) of course, but...

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-23, 08:14 PM
The bold section is a huge and unproven assumption. What if magic doesn't obey laws (at least not ones mortals can comprehend)?

Sorry, I should have specified 'where magic is used, in this specific situation magic is unlikely to be widespread because it's just too dawned difficult compared to building the pyramids with wooden tools.



What if those laws it does obey are ever shifting and fickle?

Goodbye stake universe, it was nice knowing you.

Alternatively people start investigating the rules that govern how magic changes. Something something Discworld.



What if magic itself is intelligent and doesn't like to be industrialized?

How? No seriously, is magic Luke a being? Maybe we should try positive reinforcement.


What if there are active gods in charge of magic who would rather things stay about the same?

Pick your favourite:
-They fade into obscurity compared to gods who do allow their domains to be studied and built upon.
-People keep sciencing because there are people who legitimately enjoy that and the gods won't be able to stop everyone studying magic from passing on their notes.
-All magical innovation grinds to a halt, while innovation in other areas continue. No science of magic? No new spells, because the gods stop any change.


What if magic disappears if you try to understand it?

Researching of the trains why, lack of Abby actual magicians, and potentially a solution will be found.


All of these are possible setting elements. Why is "magic is just science we haven't discovered yet" the only valid setting?

For the record, I'm not fundamentally opposed to magitech or magical industrial revolutions. My own setting has had time periods where that was in the offing. Ended by people doing stupid things (like unleashing magical nukes that cut sections of the material plane adrift in time or like ordering a relic of the creator god to destroy itself by consuming all ambient magic) of course, but...

That's not what I meant to say. Of a sing had magic, someone will apply the scientific method. At this point we have the study of magic as a field of science, and it'll output theories and laws. It's not guarranteed to output magitech or anything else, but my point was that people going 'no, magitech is wing, magic should be mysterious and mystical' age ignoring that fact that people she going to start analysing it when they so everything else, and of laws govern it a magician with a heap of those laws will be a stronger magician than one who yeasts it as mystical stuff that shouldn't be researched.

Drakevarg
2017-09-23, 08:26 PM
That's not what I meant to say. Of a sing had magic, someone will apply the scientific method. At this point we have the study of magic as a field of science, and it'll output theories and laws. It's not guarranteed to output magitech or anything else, but my point was that people going 'no, magitech is wing, magic should be mysterious and mystical' age ignoring that fact that people she going to start analysing it when they so everything else, and of laws govern it a magician with a heap of those laws will be a stronger magician than one who yeasts it as mystical stuff that shouldn't be researched.

Autocorrecting into nigh-incomprehensibility aside, I get what you're saying. I don't think that anyone's arguing that magic shouldn't be researched in-universe, but that looking at it from the outside in a Doylist perspective, it's preferable that magic defy understanding. That people attempt to do so in-setting is immaterial, the point is that to avoid magic just being alt-universe science their attempts should fail for one reason or another (such as the laws governing magic being inconsistent enough that it's a soft science at best).

PhoenixPhyre
2017-09-23, 08:34 PM
Sorry, I should have specified 'where magic is used, in this specific situation magic is unlikely to be widespread because it's just too dawned difficult compared to building the pyramids with wooden tools.

Goodbye stake universe, it was nice knowing you.

Alternatively people start investigating the rules that govern how magic changes. Something something Discworld.

How? No seriously, is magic Luke a being? Maybe we should try positive reinforcement.

Pick your favourite:
-They fade into obscurity compared to gods who do allow their domains to be studied and built upon.
-People keep sciencing because there are people who legitimately enjoy that and the gods won't be able to stop everyone studying magic from passing on their notes.
-All magical innovation grinds to a halt, while innovation in other areas continue. No science of magic? No new spells, because the gods stop any change.

Researching of the trains why, lack of Abby actual magicians, and potentially a solution will be found.

That's not what I meant to say. Of a sing had magic, someone will apply the scientific method. At this point we have the study of magic as a field of science, and it'll output theories and laws. It's not guarranteed to output magitech or anything else, but my point was that people going 'no, magitech is wing, magic should be mysterious and mystical' age ignoring that fact that people she going to start analysing it when they so everything else, and of laws govern it a magician with a heap of those laws will be a stronger magician than one who yeasts it as mystical stuff that shouldn't be researched.

You're still stuck in the "science is everything/everything is science" mentality. That's not even true for the real world. Not all truths are scientifically testable. In fact, the idea that everything that exists is scientifically testable is not scientifically testable. You're also assuming that there are answers and that those answers are accessible to humans. There aren't always answers and we can't always understand what answers there are. This is true even in scientific fields. What is the exact electronic structure of a helium atom (let alone anything more complicated)? It can be proven that we can't ever find that answer. No exact solution exists, and we can prove this. All we can get (for the vast majority of interesting cases) are decent approximations that break if you look at them hard or use them in the wrong place.

The scientific revolution was neither inevitable nor easy, and with something like magic it would be even harder since (in most systems) it requires special talent. The birth of science (as a concept) required a particular mindset--a focus on rationality and logic--that was unique to a certain part of the world at a certain time due to the specific backgrounds (including the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and many other but for events). Remove any one of those and the scientific/industrial revolution wouldn't have happened the way it did if at all.

Scientific magic is one possibility. If magic (for example) is mediated through non-mortal beings with truly alien mindsets (as in mindsets incomprehensible to man, as most fey are reputed to be) then you can study all you want, but all you'll do is offend those that make magic happen. Or, what if the Lady of Pain is the source of magic? Go ahead. Study her. I dare you.

In all the stories, magic is what happens beyond the world of mortal minds. Observing it, studying it makes it non-magic. That's one of the reported reasons that cold iron supposedly was toxic to the fey--it's a product of man's industry and thus anti-magic.

Your vision of magic only works for a very few styles of magic in fiction (gaming or otherwise). Most of them explicitly reject the idea that all magic is subject to scientific analysis. It seems the pinnacle of hubris to claim that they're all wrong and that no other type of magic is possible.

JBPuffin
2017-09-23, 09:33 PM
Now that I'm playing 5e, the characters I'm really interested in are the ones who are using their unusual skills to supplement their normal job skills. The army medic who's also a life cleric, the book collector who's also a rogue and a dabbler in the arcane, that sort of thing. I don't believe the PCs have to be special, but I also will have no complaints if they are. If anything, I'd prefer that everyone have a shot at greatness, and the PCs simply be the ones who take it. Equal opportunity, but not equal action.

Also, once again, people whining over other people's ideas about magic. Neither are wrong, Anonymous has their style of magic and don't really need anything else to be happy, Pyre wants to be able to take their anywhere. The "pinnacle of hubris" is getting into this type of debate when neither of you are even close to playing at the same tables and run notably different styles of game.

Knaight
2017-09-24, 03:01 AM
But when you get into a state of affairs where everyone has magic... Or even technology... The system breaks down. If every individual becomes inherently powerful, it becomes more difficult to control them. You would no longer have monarchies and things of that nature, it would all shift to a more democratic way of existing because if any single person could potentially destroy an entire city, it causes a lot of political problems.

Ubiquitous magic doesn't mean that everyone suddenly has an equalized capacity to destroy, and as far as technology goes there were a lot of technological advances that happened during feudal systems without disrupting them. Say there's a set of magical items that can double food production for the same amount of land and labor, and just about everyone working in the fields is using that - all that does is generally feed people better, and allow for a shift towards fewer people working in agriculture - with halving that being a lower limit, and not one that's going to be reached for any number of reasons. Instead, that limit is going to be eroded by farmers working less hard, by increased transportation difficulties that come with moving the food from the farms elsewhere, by a probable dietary shift towards better food (e.g. more meat), and a whole bunch of other things. That doesn't destroy any basic social structures.

Mechalich
2017-09-24, 06:09 AM
Ubiquitous magic doesn't mean that everyone suddenly has an equalized capacity to destroy, and as far as technology goes there were a lot of technological advances that happened during feudal systems without disrupting them. Say there's a set of magical items that can double food production for the same amount of land and labor, and just about everyone working in the fields is using that - all that does is generally feed people better, and allow for a shift towards fewer people working in agriculture - with halving that being a lower limit, and not one that's going to be reached for any number of reasons. Instead, that limit is going to be eroded by farmers working less hard, by increased transportation difficulties that come with moving the food from the farms elsewhere, by a probable dietary shift towards better food (e.g. more meat), and a whole bunch of other things. That doesn't destroy any basic social structures.

Historically, increases in agricultural technology have indeed reduced the proportion of a society's labor needed for food production. The consequence has generally been either increasing opulence acquired by the lives of the ruling class - for instance in china every time a dynasty got settled in an efficient it became decadent as **** in short order, even when the dynasty was run by former steppe nomads - or a sudden surplus of warriors available to go out and conquer, plunder, and otherwise self-aggrandize - as in the case of the Vikings.

So, if you take a historical period setting and then add magic to it that has a net positive or net negative effect on society, what you've done is similar to adding a technology to that setting and you've changed that setting accordingly. If you were to take Tang China and double food production - whether by magic or by somehow introducing the Haber Process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) into the 7th Century - the world would look very, very different as a result, because there would be also sorts of cascading effects. You don't even need magic to get weird fantastical worlds this way, you can just modify certain aspects of planetary conditions. For example, if you crank the global oxygen concentration up to Carboniferous levels weird stuff (https://www.nap.edu/read/11630/chapter/8#115) happens including giant arthropods.

If you want to have a fantasy setting that is 'just like X but with magic,' which is what most people want to do because full scale world-building from principles that aren't analogous to earth's is incredibly challenging, then there are real limitations on how much magic you can apply before the influence of the magic becomes strong than the influence of source X.

There are options here. If magic both giveth and taketh away then you can have more or if without it having as big of an impact as it otherwise would have. This is especially true if the good wizards (or whatever) spend most of their time dealing with the bad wizards (or whatever) and it also helps if much of the conflict happens in suitably unseen spirit realms, inside the tumult of the soul, or something similar. It also helps to couch magic within whatever mystical tropes were available within the society. To continue with the Tang China example, if you throw in a race of fox people that's far less disruptive than a tribe of orcs because people in that society already believed in the existence of fox people so you don't have to modify the mythos you just confirm it.

Lemmy
2017-09-26, 06:29 PM
I like magic to be a force of nature, and like other force of natures, it can be researched and (possibly) understood and manipulated.

That doesn't make magic "science", science is just one of the tools used to try and understand it.

The reason not every high-school graduate has a level in Wizard is the same reason not everyone has a Physics Ph.D, even if most people have a basic understanding of physics or why not everyone is a Olympic's level athlete despite having P.E classes: Because that basic understanding isn't enough to accomplish high level feats. Just because you know how something is done, doesn't mean you can actually do it.

Knowing the physics behind every single movement made by a high-level gymnast doesn't make you capable of performing high-level gynastics. Reading every HEMA scroll around won't make you a good swordsman. Being able to perfectly solve a math problem where you have to calculate the speed and trajectory of a round object doesn't make you any better at sending at baseball.

You need the physical strength and muscle memory to pull that stuff off. Same with magic... Only it requires mental/spiritual strength and "mind/soul memory" (which can be achieved with the right training and/or genetic makeup). People with good education might have an idea of how magic works... But they still can't use it.

And of course, just because magic is consistent and/or somewhat understood by educated people, doesn't mean it's common. I could be incredibly difficult, costly and/or dangerous to use.

Magic doesn't have to be an unsolvable mystery to be special, beautiful or awesome... Just like understanding thermodynamics and creating air conditioners doesn't make blizzards any less amazing or terrifying.

EDIT: All of that and I didn't answer the thread's title question (although my answer is implied in the text above :smallbiggrin:)

I like peasants/commoners to have a few small-time practitioners among them: To use 3.X/PF terminology: That'd be a couple levels in an NPC class, maybe just a guy who has a trait or feat that lets him cast a couple cantrips or something... Or , some rare cases, even someone with a couple levels in an actual PC class... Like a hermit who's actually a 2nd level druid or something.

That said... I'm not a fan of "Everything worthwhile is magic. Magic is cheap and easy and everyone carries a thousand magic tools everywhere" type of settings either. As for "magitech"... I don't know... I think the idea is cool, but it's almost always poorly implemented.

Jay R
2017-09-26, 09:14 PM
For me, the most clear difference between science and magic is the extent to which it becomes a commodity.

In the 1950s, extremely rich people had car phones, by basically paying for a radio station and their own frequency. In the late 1980s, a fairly rich friend of mine had a phone roughly 4" x 4" x 13 inches that he could use on campouts.

My current phone is far and away more incredible than those were.

GPS in the 1990s was a U.S. Army exclusive ability. Now we all have it.

By contrast, nobody else in Middle Earth could do what Gandalf could do fifty years after he did it. There are no stories set in the fall of Camelot in which some entrepreneur sells Merlin's spells to a large number of people. Fifty years after the appearance of Baba Yaga, nobody is selling homes on giant chicken legs.

So getting back to the original question, no, I don't want peasants to have magic. If I wanted that, I'd role-play the 21st century.

Anonymouswizard
2017-09-27, 01:52 AM
So getting back to the original question, no, I don't want peasants to have magic. If I wanted that, I'd role-play the 21st century.

*looks at games he has planned* funny you should mention that period.

I wouldn't be surprised of those who like common and industrialised magic like to play in the modern era (as well as 20th century and science fiction games), out is a natural fit.

Satinavian
2017-09-27, 02:49 AM
This is true even in scientific fields. What is the exact electronic structure of a helium atom (let alone anything more complicated)? It can be proven that we can't ever find that answer. No exact solution exists, and we can prove this. All we can get (for the vast majority of interesting cases) are decent approximations that break if you look at them hard or use them in the wrong place.That example is wrong.

We do indeed know that an exact solution exist. We do even know how it looks. We just can't calculate it and at best can write it as some infinite sum of ever harder to evaluate implicite functions. Even if someone gave us the solution, we couldn't actually prove that this is in fact the solution. But the existance of one is provable.

The scientific revolution was neither inevitable nor easy, and with something like magic it would be even harder since (in most systems) it requires special talent.Maybe, maybe not. While "special talent" is often used in fantasy stories, traditional ideas about magic revolve more about either secrets or vast knowledge or decades of training (and meditation). And i am not sure about the majority of systems.

The birth of science (as a concept) required a particular mindset--a focus on rationality and logic--that was unique to a certain part of the world at a certain time due to the specific backgrounds (including the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and many other but for events). Remove any one of those and the scientific/industrial revolution wouldn't have happened the way it did if at all.And what is the problem here ? Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy just fine. The only reason that nowadays magic seems opposed to science is that IRL magic does not work and every attempt to investigate magic with the scientific method showed exactly that. In any fictional universe where magic exists, this is inherently not true.


In all the stories, magic is what happens beyond the world of mortal minds. Observing it, studying it makes it non-magic. That's one of the reported reasons that cold iron supposedly was toxic to the fey--it's a product of man's industry and thus anti-magic.No. The most iconic human magic user in middle/western european stories is probably Dr. Faustus very much an academic. The other 3 important human groups in that area associated with magic are witches, alchemists and cabbalist, the latter two pretty much doing science (trying to find ways to distinguish real nature of things from added attributes and how to transfer those attributes, using lots of sympathetic links/ trying to find powerful words, letters and numbers and their application). And the only reason Europe has so much "magic comes from the devil" stories is based on catholic theology denouncing christian theurgy early on.
And when we look to china we find the immortals and all the great deeds that meditating and studying the laws of nature (and energies) for hundreads of years can allow (ofc. basic immortality is one of the earlier secrets here)

JusticeZero
2017-10-02, 03:36 AM
My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special. You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.

Mechalich
2017-10-02, 05:40 AM
My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special. You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.

A 1st Level D&D spellcaster, especially in 3.X but also in other editions, is actually a fairly powerful spellcaster by the standards of general fantasy. They have the ability to consistently invoke substantial magical effects multiple times per day. And many 1st level spells are surprisingly potent - like Charm Person, Endure Elements, Floating Disk and Sleep. Additionally, many 0-level spells are surprisingly capable of dramatically changing basic living conditions if they are abundant in a society. These include the Cleric spells Create Water (transformative in the desert environment)and Purify Food and Drink (immeasurably valuable when it comes to large game hunting), the Druid spell Know Direction (massively useful for navigation prior to the invention of the compass), the Wizard spells Mending (which essentially means durable goods like furniture and tableware last forever) and Prestidigitation (which entirely replaces laundry as an industry).

Even such seemingly low-powered magic, if abundant and widespread, would have transformational effects on society.

JusticeZero
2017-10-02, 06:03 AM
Yes, and it is easier to just let those happen than it is to try to simultaneously make the party feel unique and fill the world with mountains of military enchanted armaments, munitions, armor, and items of all kinds.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-02, 07:11 AM
My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special.

What's a level?

If we take this as meaning 'starting characters', this is a big thing dependent on both setting and system. In Fate starting characters are special by virtue of having a Refresh value above 0, but this is special in regards to the story, not the world. In Exalted a beginning character is special just by being Exalted, and 4e assumes that 1st level means you have a lot of experience under your belt.


You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.

I've played in many games where we begin as one among many, and end up as one among many. There's nothing saying that the equivalent of experienced characters can't be common, in fact it's standard in games like the Laundry RPG.

Now this will depend very much on the setting, but in a Fate game I might have people with Good skills or approaches be relatively common, compared to another game where your master martial artists has Average Fight (we're playing a game about gods, he just doesn't stack up).

Vogie
2017-10-02, 08:00 AM
A 1st Level D&D spellcaster, especially in 3.X but also in other editions, is actually a fairly powerful spellcaster by the standards of general fantasy. They have the ability to consistently invoke substantial magical effects multiple times per day. And many 1st level spells are surprisingly potent - like Charm Person, Endure Elements, Floating Disk and Sleep. Additionally, many 0-level spells are surprisingly capable of dramatically changing basic living conditions if they are abundant in a society. These include the Cleric spells Create Water (transformative in the desert environment)and Purify Food and Drink (immeasurably valuable when it comes to large game hunting), the Druid spell Know Direction (massively useful for navigation prior to the invention of the compass), the Wizard spells Mending (which essentially means durable goods like furniture and tableware last forever) and Prestidigitation (which entirely replaces laundry as an industry).

Even such seemingly low-powered magic, if abundant and widespread, would have transformational effects on society.

That's also up to the world you've built. A level 1 mage may be the sole hedge wizard for the entire southeastern region, or just one of thousands mage university freshmen who decided to call it quits after a year, and is going to be a Mending & Floating Disk two-trick for his father's mining village. I remember a Drunks & Dragons episode where the party is talking to a guard, a commoner, who remarks that he's studying for his "Level 1 exam". Yes, it's a little meta, but we have rankings and such in the real world WITHOUT access to any magic.

You could still have a laundry industry... which could consist of level 0 mages casting Prestidigitation. That would still be a thing. If you're in a western outpost, maybe people feel forced to go to church to keep in the good graces of the local cleric precisely *because* of Create Water if a drought hits like it did a couple summers back. That Sherpa or guide that the party hires to lead them through the unmapped terrain may just be a ranger or druid. Your interpreter may just be a commoner with an Eastern Star Ioun Stone attuned to them.

Any technology, any power, if abundant and widespread, has transformational effects on society. Basic plumbing. Literacy. The lathe. A sawmill. Look what Rome did with just roads and aqueducts. If you change things, things change. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's changed. The word "robot" comes from the Slavic robota, which means "forced laborer"... if there's an abundance of need, there will be jobs that are just forced laborers. That could be for food, water, physical labor, communication... you name it. There are carpenters, and also carpenters that can cast Wood Shape, and there's likely a market for both of their wares.

Necroticplague
2017-10-02, 11:18 AM
The idea that any technology or techniques that can be observed will be replicated and spread influence the setting at large is a hilariously neophillic view of the world that even our own didn't hold true for the most part of it's existence. A man who lived 200,000 years ago lived pretty much identically to his great-great-great-......-great grandson 20,000 years later. If the real world could have stasis for so long, why wouldn't we expect our fictional worlds to be just as static? Sure, maybe it's replicable. Doesn't mean it is replicated. So yes, maybe mass spread of magic could form as 'just another technology'. However, it doesn't, for the same reason technology itself doesn't spread: because of moral people without the perverse need to corrupt everything to serve their own purposes. The fact that players from a different time without this proper morality, and can't seem to switch gears to pretend to, indicate the fault lies with them for not buying into the setting, not the setting for having any kind of flaw.

Vogie
2017-10-02, 12:18 PM
While that's certainly true, the main reason tech didn't move in the past is due to the speed of information at that time.

If one guy figures out the best way to skin a cat, than his family will know, and likely that tribe will know, and that's pretty much it, pre-literacy. Other tribes with other languages can't figure it out without directly observing it (and maybe not even then). However, once languages become spreading, whichever becomes the "common" language, then memetic information starts to move and breed. This tribes way of hunting is made better by that tribes style of knife. This tribes' ritual washing causes them to be less effected by disease that decimate the neighboring tribes. Ideas spread at the speed of friendliness.

Once a lingua franca is agreed upon, the memes will start breeding and the good ones will stick. If the goddess of the sea clerics give them the ability to Create Water to drink, that's going to be largely ignored by their neighbors in the riverlands... but once a conversation starts with nomads, some enterprising merchant will think that maybe long treks across the desert would benefit with one of these water-generating clerics. Now ideas are spreading at the speed of trade. At the same time Seafarers may sneer at the mystical ways of the desert nomads, but people building ports could really use a sandbender, so maybe take these kids as wards and teach them your ways, please? Also they're hostage-collateral for out business deal, but mostly teach them please.

Later, once literacy is invented, which most TTRPGs have as a given, ideas spread even faster. Sure, they'll go only between the elites first, but scribes have always been a thing, and eventually traders and merchants will learn to read & write for business purposes. Add on an active pantheon of deities revealing themselves to clerics and whatnot, and wizards finding other wizards to send "message" to, and suddenly memes are now faster than a horse or a raven can fly.

While constructing a world you can gate the flow of magical power however you want:

Maybe all of the arcane magic can only be performed while speaking Draconic.
Maybe only a handful of deities are strong enough to give spells to their clerics.
Maybe Warlocks' patrons' pacts are only for a set period of time.
Perhaps sacrifices are involved.
Maybe the most powerful magic is held only by Mages for hire, whom anyone can access, but for a price (a la Lies of Locke Lamora)
Maybe the only mages are sorcerers, due to bloodline-based power, thus the only peasants who can do magic are the illegitimate children of those families.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-02, 02:54 PM
The idea that any technology or techniques that can be observed will be replicated and spread influence the setting at large is a hilariously neophillic view of the world that even our own didn't hold true for the most part of it's existence. A man who lived 200,000 years ago lived pretty much identically to his great-great-great-......-great grandson 20,000 years later. If the real world could have stasis for so long, why wouldn't we expect our fictional worlds to be just as static? Sure, maybe it's replicable. Doesn't mean it is replicated. So yes, maybe mass spread of magic could form as 'just another technology'. However, it doesn't, for the same reason technology itself doesn't spread: because of moral people without the perverse need to corrupt everything to serve their own purposes. The fact that players from a different time without this proper morality, and can't seem to switch gears to pretend to, indicate the fault lies with them for not buying into the setting, not the setting for having any kind of flaw.

Okay, I've been doing the disservice of assuming at least a medieval level of technology here, where innovation and replication have been taking place at least somewhere in the world for thousands of years.

If we assume a culture more like one from the prehistoric (for want of a better term here) era, then yes new inventions, technologies, and spells will spread slowly, die out, and be discovered many times.

IIRC, since at least the time of Ancient Egypt, possibly longer, the technology of the world has been ever increasing, even if secrets were jealously guarded, although that rate of increase would vary over time (tending towards higher over time, but IIRC this wasn't a solid rule). The rate also varied in parts of the world, but for the cultures in the Europe-Africa-Asia landmass trade meant that something invented in China could reach Norway within a human lifespan (not that it always would, see jealously guarded).

Ever since humans have had enough time that they don't need to dedicate every second to making food and more humans they have been trying to take apart the world and put it back together so they can spend less time on making food and more time on making new humans (not that we always use the right equipment for that). Remember, swords are technology, bows are technology, pointed sticks are technology, even fire is technology (and I'm not certain we can't count horses as technology).

Technology is an exponential curve, each bit of technology means you have more time to dedicate towards making the next piece of technology, and so on until you reach the point where most humans don't have to produce food and can instead focus on producing more humans (it seems to come at about the point half the world realises the planet needs fixing).

Plus we seem to have different philosophies about the reasons behind the spread of technology. To me man has been corrupting stuff since he began taming animals and cultivating crops, I see no reason to stop there if we can make peoples lives better (and throughout history new inventions have been introduced and spread both by people who want to control and people who want to help). To me people in a setting who research and try to spread magic are doing so for their own reason, which might be control, might be socialism, or it might be that they just want people to know this great new spell they've come up with.

Necroticplague
2017-10-02, 03:06 PM
Plus we seem to have different philosophies about the reasons behind the spread of technology. To me man has been corrupting stuff since he began taming animals and cultivating crops, I see no reason to stop there if we can make peoples lives better (and throughout history new inventions have been introduced and spread both by people who want to control and people who want to help). To me people in a setting who research and try to spread magic are doing so for their own reason, which might be control, might be socialism, or it might be that they just want people to know this great new spell they've come up with.

Indeed, I agree as to the duration of humanities long history of immoral acts (which, I would argue, most likely started before humans were humans). Technological development, whatever surface reason, only comes from the vice of ambition. Never has a man who could look out at the world and be happy with what they already have felt the need to develop something to change some aspect of it. Even your own reasoning indicates that immorality, with 'making lives better' taken as an inherently positive thing without question, as opposed to 'learning to live with what is already existing', which has a greater ability to solve the problem of dissatisfaction, but humans are loathe to take for some unfathomable reason.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-02, 03:15 PM
Indeed, I agree as to the duration of humanities long history of immoral acts (which, I would argue, most likely started before humans were humans). Technological development, whatever surface reason, only comes from the vice of ambition. Never has a man who could look out at the world and be happy with what they already have felt the need to develop something to change some aspect of it. Even your own reasoning indicates that immorality, with 'making lives better' taken as an inherently positive thing without question, as opposed to 'learning to live with what is already existing', which has a greater ability to solve the problem of dissatisfaction, but humans are loathe to take for some unfathomable reason.

While I agree that 'learning to live with what we have' might solve the problem of dissastisfaction, ambition is not truly bad. If not for the ambition their ancestors held no human would have discovered fire, if not for the ambition of our ancestors we would not be here to have this conversation.

Whatever mistakes we have made, we have now created problems, and nothing is solved by saying 'oh, that was a mistake, better forget this entire technology thing'. I believe we have come far enough that we should own our mistakes, face up to them with no fear, and say that yes, we have made mistakes, yes we have meddled with nature, and yes we cannot fix it right now, but we will keep trying, and keep moving forwards until one day we are at a place to fix our mistakes or we make ourselves extinct trying. Technology might have caused these problems, but it's our only tool for fixing them.

Necroticplague
2017-10-02, 03:32 PM
While I agree that 'learning to live with what we have' might solve the problem of dissastisfaction, ambition is not truly bad.
Why not?

If not for the ambition their ancestors held no human would have discovered fire, if not for the ambition of our ancestors we would not be here to have this conversation. Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?

Max_Killjoy
2017-10-02, 03:54 PM
Why not?
Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?

You're 100% welcome to give up fire and everything discovered/invented after, including the means of this discussion, for a month, or even a week, and then let us know what you think.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-02, 04:04 PM
Why not?
Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?


You're 100% welcome to give up fire and everything discovered/invented after, including the means of this discussion, for a month, or even a week, and then let us know what you think.

If we ever see you on this forum we'll conclude you decided it wasn't worth it.

Max_Killjoy
2017-10-02, 04:09 PM
If we ever see you on this forum we'll conclude you decided it wasn't worth it.

That might be going a bit farther with it than I intended... :smalleek:

Kane0
2017-10-02, 05:51 PM
Poor, dirty peasants use poor, dirty magic as befitting their status. The magic they have gets them up with the sun, works them hard through the day and ensures the need for more and more children. Any benefits provided come with adequate, usually equal drawbacks to keep them poor and dirty. No free lighting and laundering here, nosiree!

JusticeZero
2017-10-03, 04:14 AM
There is also an assumption that if magi are common, that magic will be ubiquitous. Not necessarily.. In the base d&d/pf, spell slots are limited and items incredibly costly for common use. Adventurers are loaded with gear, yes, but that is no more affordable than a modern battle tank and every piece of equipment therein. A group of high level adventurers carry so much gear that it is like a loaded aircraft carrier sailing into port.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-03, 04:50 AM
There is also an assumption that if magi are common, that magic will be ubiquitous. Not necessarily.. In the base d&d/pf, spell slots are limited and items incredibly costly for common use. Adventurers are loaded with gear, yes, but that is no more affordable than a modern battle tank and every piece of equipment therein. A group of high level adventurers carry so much gear that it is like a loaded aircraft carrier sailing into port.

True, although that varies with system. There's also a decent number of magic items in D&D that should be more common then they are (either owned by pretty much all of the upper class or relatively common among merchants and skilled labourers). Not to the point where every peasant family has a +2 axiomatic hoe, but to the point where if you're in a town someone probably has a minor wondrous item that helps with their job, and most nobles are carrying around rings of resistance or the like.

The reason this doesn't happen is the price of magic items, but you could probably slash the prices of most magic items to 10% and have the world work just as well. Although this still would end up with most nobles only having a handful of magic items, due to the expenses of running their estates and ruling their lands.

What would be rare is magic weapons and armour. They're useful enough to exist, but most people buying or commissioning magic items will want something subtler and more useful. To most people a hat of disguise is significantly more useful than a +5 vorpal keen dagger (and past daggers most people probably don't carry weapons).

I generally like to run Fate, and either use the 'magic is fluff' version where magic isn't more common because for most people it's just as effective as mundane skills, or limit magic to interacting with 'astral' things. So magic is summoning spirits, making invisible barriers, and things like that (yes, I do really like the Storm Summoning and Voidcalling systems in the Fate System Toolkit, and use them as the basis for settings). I have one unused setting I plan to rework which is all different varieties of elf with different attitudes towards magic and thus different systems (including all five FST systems).

Psyren
2017-10-03, 07:00 AM
In my opinion, magic has to be strange and unusual or else it's not magic. Just weird, different science where the experts wear snuggies instead of labcoats. In which case, pretty much every educated character in the setting should have at least one level in wizard because academic understanding is literally all it takes to do wizard stuff.

So in regards to peasants, I think my usual interpretation is that most of them have seen something unusual in the woods once or twice, or something in the creepy old house, but someone right in front of them throwing around laser beams? Weird as heck. Magic items are bizarre SCP-like objects or family heirlooms with long histories behind them, not something used as a convenience tool.


I like when things are plausible.

In a D&D world, for example, it's very difficult to reconcile the extreme threat levels posed by monsters in the wilderness with anything resembling historical farm practices.

So, if you're talking about peasants in a game like D&D, I'd always be on the side of magic.


Whose magic, though? Probably not the peasants themselves, because if they had their own magic, they would tend to stop being peasants.

That means it's usually an outside force of some kind.


If I'm feeling creative, then each village or region will have a different outside force.

Maybe the three heartland valleys will be supported by the Royal Druidic Council of Agriculture and Roads. At the appropriate times of year, one of the royal Druids comes through and casts the appropriate crop-growing spells. They're the three most loyal districts, of course.

Maybe the farms around Drywood Hill were founded right after the War of Three Giants, in the ashes of the old forest, in spite of the legends about the witches on the hill. The towns come together every year for an unusually raucous midsummer celebration -- they even pay for outside entertainment, and the towns certainly subsidize the festival's ale and hard cider supply. The townsfolk say it's to show off, and maybe get some new blood. Every few years, though, some beautiful boy visits the festival but doesn't come back. The witch-nymph of Drywood Hill has taken a meal back to her grove of dryads. In return, she annually blesses the fields, and protects the farmers from comparable threats, according to the contract she forged with the humans in the wake of the war. She's not really happy with the arrangement, but she tolerates it because the alternative was being burned out by the giants.

Stuff like that.

Some combination of these is what I work with generally. The peasants are truly peasants, but there are regional powers that keep the nastier baddies at bay or at least hire and outfit the adventurers who do.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-03, 07:29 AM
One thing I've come to understand is that prevalence of magic is not a linear scale. There are (at least) two different scales--how common (and powerful) are spell-casters and how easy is it to create lasting items. The standard 3.5e D&D settings (Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk) lean toward the (high, high) corner, while Eberron occupies the high item, but medium caster side of things (since most NPCs don't level beyond 10 or so). Arthas is low on spell-casters and relatively low on items.

This means that you can have a setting where many or most people have some magical talent (can cast the equivalent of 5e cantrips), but magic items are few and far between (especially permanent ones rather than consumables). You can also have ones where artificers rule the day--individual spellcasters aren't strong but can use gadgets to perform mighty works.

My current setting is more like the first of those--about 1/4 of the population has the equivalent of 5e's Magic Initiate feat--they can cast a couple cantrips at will and a first level spell 1/x day. These are 5e cantrips, so generally weaker than 3.5e cantrips. Most peasants don't learn the combat ones (in fact, most peasant cantrips aren't in the PHB since minor loosen soil or discourage vermin aren't adventurer-type spells). In one area, most peasants learn divine cantrips--mending, guidance, etc--because it's a highly religious area. In another, more animist area, the cantrips learned are druidic. In a third, they are arcane.

However, creating magical items is difficult (involving placing a portion of one's soul into the item while creating it, which weakens the creator significantly for a time). Creating potions is easier, since the ingredients provide a good portion of the needed anima. This means that basically no one except the leaders of nations have magical items and those that they do are hoarded carefully. Most items are found in long-lost treasure hordes of nations destroyed centuries ago and are valued beyond price--selling them is an adventure in and of itself (and might result in having your items nationalized without direct recompense if you're not careful).

Kaiu Keiichi
2017-10-04, 01:26 PM
You may want to take a look at Glorantha. Magic is part of daily life, and everyone has small little prayers, spells and other things that help them do their tasks and get through the day. This is called Common Magic in Glorantha (depending on which Glorantha game you play and the rules system it uses.)

Bohandas
2017-10-04, 01:33 PM
I think that making the majority of the population in elven and dwarven and other long lived species communities be NPC spellcasting classes like adepts and magewrights would neatly solve the issue of why they aren;t all higher level when they have more time to learn and experience. Instead of being higher level thay all do something that requires more training and expertise to start on in the first place

Satinavian
2017-10-05, 01:29 AM
The idea that any technology or techniques that can be observed will be replicated and spread influence the setting at large is a hilariously neophillic view of the world that even our own didn't hold true for the most part of it's existence. A man who lived 200,000 years ago lived pretty much identically to his great-great-great-......-great grandson 20,000 years later. If the real world could have stasis for so long, why wouldn't we expect our fictional worlds to be just as static? Sure, maybe it's replicable. Doesn't mean it is replicated. So yes, maybe mass spread of magic could form as 'just another technology'. However, it doesn't, for the same reason technology itself doesn't spread: because of moral people without the perverse need to corrupt everything to serve their own purposes. The fact that players from a different time without this proper morality, and can't seem to switch gears to pretend to, indicate the fault lies with them for not buying into the setting, not the setting for having any kind of flaw.
We know pretty much nothing about societies and technology 200 000 years ago. That is the time when homo sapiens is estimated to have come into existance but long before any of them left Africa, a continent, that is still not that thoroughly searched and additionally has a climate that is bad for preservation of fossils.

But we do know, that in any age technological spread was incredibly fast. That does include prehistoric times. New, better ways to make stone tools, ways to do pottery, new weapons, ways to produce quality leather, use of substances like salt, eventually domesticated animals and agriculture... everything spread ridiculously fast once invented and only natural barriers could stop this for longer periods of time. Or regions where the new technology was useless because of climate/lack of necessary ressources.


Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?Fire is estimated to vave been used by hominids roughly 3 times as long as modern humans actually exist.

And it shows. Modern humans have problems eating raw, unprocessed meat, even when earlier hominids did use it as part of a balanced diet. We actually already evolved to make use of fire.

WarKitty
2017-10-05, 02:21 AM
I like making magic common. It really screws with the players.

Sure, you can try to detect magic at the noble party. But a there's a LOT of it. Most of them are wearing some form of illusion spell to make themselves look more attractive. The suspicious have charms against poison. Fantastic outfits that aren't possible under physics are held in place by magic. Servants with mending spells and prestidigitation cleaning make themselves available in case of any mishaps If the giver is truly wealthy, he might have unseen servant caterers.

Now find the actual trap.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-05, 08:17 AM
Now find the actual trap.

The one under a polymorph spell, obviously.

Psyren
2017-10-05, 09:05 AM
These are 5e cantrips, so generally weaker than 3.5e cantrips.

Are you sure about that? IIRC, in addition to being at-will, 5e cantrips scale with level.


I like making magic common. It really screws with the players.

Sure, you can try to detect magic at the noble party. But a there's a LOT of it. Most of them are wearing some form of illusion spell to make themselves look more attractive. The suspicious have charms against poison. Fantastic outfits that aren't possible under physics are held in place by magic. Servants with mending spells and prestidigitation cleaning make themselves available in case of any mishaps If the giver is truly wealthy, he might have unseen servant caterers.

Now find the actual trap.

Also, find the assassin.

Those aren't really "peasants" though. Among nobility and society's elite, magic should indeed be common. That doesn't mean it is commonly accessible for the majority of the population though; "common in certain circles" can still end up being "rare."

Clistenes
2017-10-05, 10:23 AM
My dream is for somebody to take 3.5 rules to their logical end, and make a setting that is like Star Wars' Galactic Republic but with spelljamming vessels instead of starships, simulacrum-powered spelljamming helms instead of hyperdrive engines, and magic instead of technology.

Once a wizard reaches a level high enough, he or she can start a chain reaction, producing unlimited resources to produce an obscene amount of magic items. Teleportation, Plane Shift, Unseen Worker, Fabricate and Magecraft can produce the needed resources and money, the xp can be bought using Pipes of Power or produced using Ambrosia cheese, and Dedicated Wright homunculi can multiply the production... And voila! Magical Industry!

Use spelljamming to extend the system to other Crystal Spheres and done! Galactic Republic/Empire!

The problem of high-level characters taking control can be solved by having a big, complex society with checks and balances, and several organizations and powers keeping each other in check. When you have trillions of sentient beings, no single wizardly cabal can hope to control everything, because there are millions of powerful beings that can gather to stop you if you get too greedy.

Vogie
2017-10-05, 11:39 AM
Those aren't really "peasants" though. Among nobility and society's elite, magic should indeed be common. That doesn't mean it is commonly accessible for the majority of the population though; "common in certain circles" can still end up being "rare."

These things trickle down. Just like "owning a mobile phone" was once a core aspect of the super rich, now homeless people have them... and that's over a period of 25 years. Nobility in the past, in those eras most likely used by TTRPGs, had a staff of hundreds, if not thousands. Guards, servants, scribes, couriers, bakers, butchers, vineyard owners & workers. If there's magic that can be learned, there will be mundane uses for it. Prestidigitation alone has an epic use in any society - It'd likely be taught to guards and soldiers first (keeping food hot & tasty, clothes clean, beer cold, and removing campfires), then scribes (or anyone who uses candles around flammable things like paper), all of whom would likely share that with their families while working or after they retire.

I think the original point was that if there's a magic-lacking society, the ability to detect magic are incredibly important. It makes the magical trap or item glow like a MMORPG quest item.

On the other hand, if there's a magic-rich society, those abilities are no longer the slam dunks they were before. If couriers and stagecoach drivers have a wand of Speak with Animals in lieu of a crop, if mines are created with Stone Shape, bodega owners have a familiar to keep an eye on the front of the shop, farmers use Minor Illusion or magic missile to scare birds & Vermin away from the crops & livestock, every sherpa has boots of Feather fall, servants with amulets of Mage Hand, and merchants have an alarm-variant on each of their doors, *everything* glows. Detect Magic just shows the enchantments or magic items, instead of pointing out something of interest or value.

pwykersotz
2017-10-05, 11:45 AM
In the setting I'm working on right now, there will be "small magic" among the common folk, based on animism and little rituals and taboos and the like, that does have some noticeable effect but doesn't radically alter things. I'm trying for a feel like it could be the magic, or it could be a natural effect; so there's an special recipe for fighting infections that starts with a certain mold... implying it could be the little plant spirits or it could be rudimentary antibiotics. And not the impact of modern antibiotics, but it can make the difference between dying or coming out of it after hitting bottom.

This sounds pretty awesome. I hope you post about it further sometime.


I like very restrained alchemy and herbalism being the magic level for my lowly hamlets. A 0th level Priest with a cantrip or two would be a very special person in such a place. A witch in the forest is a good reason to NEVER go there. It evokes the feel of classic fairy tales, which I like.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-05, 12:14 PM
Are you sure about that? IIRC, in addition to being at-will, 5e cantrips scale with level.


I was thinking less of the combat cantrips than the utility ones. For example, Detect Magic and Detect Poison are both level 1+ spells in 5e, while they were cantrips in 3.5e. Also, peasants don't have class levels, so their cantrips don't scale. That 1d10 for firebolt stays 1d10.

Probably the most common PHB cantrip for peasants to take would be light or dancing lights (at least for humans/halflings). That or druidcraft for the weather predictions. Possibly prestidigitation or mending for those in relevant trades. But still, only a small fraction of humans can cast any spells at all.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-05, 12:24 PM
prestidigitation

There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by a few million castings of that spell.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-05, 01:21 PM
There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by a few million castings of that spell.

That seems to be the general consensus of my players anyway :smallsmile:

Psyren
2017-10-05, 06:02 PM
My dream is for somebody to take 3.5 rules to their logical end, and make a setting that is like Star Wars' Galactic Republic but with spelljamming vessels instead of starships, simulacrum-powered spelljamming helms instead of hyperdrive engines, and magic instead of technology.

Once a wizard reaches a level high enough, he or she can start a chain reaction, producing unlimited resources to produce an obscene amount of magic items. Teleportation, Plane Shift, Unseen Worker, Fabricate and Magecraft can produce the needed resources and money, the xp can be bought using Pipes of Power or produced using Ambrosia cheese, and Dedicated Wright homunculi can multiply the production... And voila! Magical Industry!

Use spelljamming to extend the system to other Crystal Spheres and done! Galactic Republic/Empire!

The problem of high-level characters taking control can be solved by having a big, complex society with checks and balances, and several organizations and powers keeping each other in check. When you have trillions of sentient beings, no single wizardly cabal can hope to control everything, because there are millions of powerful beings that can gather to stop you if you get too greedy.

Or, you know, gods :smalltongue:
Which most settings have.


These things trickle down. Just like "owning a mobile phone" was once a core aspect of the super rich, now homeless people have them... and that's over a period of 25 years.

That's technology though, not magic. The main difference between the two is that technology can be made user-friendly. One of magic's defining traits (at least in D&D) is that it should require some kind of uncommon quality to use - whether that is intense study, a unique lineage, singular piety, divine intervention or something else that the majority of people aren't capable of. There is a passage in 3.5's Complete Arcane about this quality, and it is further borne out in the DMG population tables.

WarKitty
2017-10-05, 06:34 PM
Also, find the assassin.

Those aren't really "peasants" though. Among nobility and society's elite, magic should indeed be common. That doesn't mean it is commonly accessible for the majority of the population though; "common in certain circles" can still end up being "rare."

Eh, I was thinking with that of it being common enough that you would have servants with magical abilities. Which of course implies it's common enough.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-05, 07:05 PM
Eh, I was thinking with that of it being common enough that you would have servants with magical abilities. Which of course implies it's common enough.

Or that the aristocracy culls the peasantry looking for those capable of minor magic for servants and inducts those capable of more than minor magic into their own ranks.

Psyren
2017-10-05, 08:16 PM
Eh, I was thinking with that of it being common enough that you would have servants with magical abilities. Which of course implies it's common enough.

The servants can quite easily have gotten the magic they use from their patrons. Much like a maid doesn't bring her washing machine to do your laundry in, she uses yours.

Or if the servants do indeed have magic of their own, it's going to be a very household-utility sort, like prestidigitation on the countertops and mage hand to dust the chandelier - not, say, being able to disguise themselves for the masquerade ball or charm their employers.

Shoreward
2017-10-05, 08:39 PM
Peasants should have whatever "magical technology" they could reasonably be expected to possess based upon how the setting's magic works.

If proliferation of magical items is widespread, I expect even the poorest village to have at least one decently potent hand-me-down. When one in every hundred people are mages, there should still be a heck of a lot of mages and their magic should shape the practical parts of every day society.

Let's take 5e. Assuming the world includes Feats, anyone can become a Magic Initiate and be able to use two cantrips at will and a single level one spell per long rest. From any caster-class spell list. Take a look at some of those cantrips and how they could be used practically and constantly, assuming the materials were present.


Prestidigitation can literally clean clothing.
Control Flames can let you expand, extinguish, and brighten flames. You can also make fire puppet shows.
Gust could let you dust a house or move an object like you're Isaac from Golden Sun.
Light, for one hour of flashlight availability or lighting up escaping thieves. Or hey, just mood lighting. You can choose the colour.
Mage Hand for housework, convenience, and guards who need to open doors from a distance.
Message for quiet and private "radio chatter".
Mold Earth for digging and moving...


And that's just a few examples. Imagine a society where anyone with token magic training and some basic materials could do this stuff as often as they wanted. Hedge Mages could be extremely common, and basic magical knowledge would be a great thing to use as a specialist commodity or a childhood tutoring service. Even if it's expensive, I could definitely see most nobles having their non-magical kids taught a couple cantrips as part of their education.

Most of this is pure silliness, but I like thinking about it. Magic that shapes common life is fascinating and sometimes awesome to me.

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-05, 08:52 PM
Shoreward, do note that feats in 5e are not generally available without PC class levels--only variant humans get them at first level, and those either don't exist or are there exception, not the rule (hence their variant status). NPCs generally don't have PC class levels, so they don't get them automatically.

This means only a minority (not all peasants are human, not all humans are variant humans) can take feats at all, and many of them will choose other feats (depending on aptitude and training). It's not like the NPCs get to pick their feats at character creation out of a book--they get what they get based on personality, training, and experience.

Also, most would, in my opinion, choose the class they're most inclined towards--devoutly religious NPCs choose cleric, scholarly ones choose wizard, etc.

Shoreward
2017-10-05, 09:31 PM
Shoreward, do note that feats in 5e are not generally available without PC class levels--only variant humans get them at first level, and those either don't exist or are there exception, not the rule (hence their variant status). NPCs generally don't have PC class levels, so they don't get them automatically.

This means only a minority (not all peasants are human, not all humans are variant humans) can take feats at all, and many of them will choose other feats (depending on aptitude and training). It's not like the NPCs get to pick their feats at character creation out of a book--they get what they get based on personality, training, and experience.

Also, most would, in my opinion, choose the class they're most inclined towards--devoutly religious NPCs choose cleric, scholarly ones choose wizard, etc.

Oh of course. I thought it was something fun to look at, but it's definitely not a standard game type.

Mind you, I tend to assume DMs give NPCs feats anyhow, because a lot of the ones I know use people with class levels more commonly than just for the major characters. My thought experiment assumes a world where people from levels 1-5 are at least passably common, since that's been my experience. If magical training was known to produce practical results... well, like I said, I'd expect to see a resurgence in Hedge Mages passing out discount spell training like some kind of cheap fantasy Dojo to make a quick buck.

Either way, it was less about the feat itself and more about the thought. How might the rules influence the world of the game? I'm sure other people could find better examples of things available even to the lower rungs of a classic D&D world. I've got limited experience in the in-depth rules.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-06, 02:39 AM
Or that the aristocracy culls the peasantry looking for those capable of minor magic for servants and inducts those capable of more than minor magic into their own ranks.

Assuming they have the time or resources, which isn't true in all worlds.


Shoreward, do note that feats in 5e are not generally available without PC class levels--only variant humans get them at first level, and those either don't exist or are there exception, not the rule (hence their variant status). NPCs generally don't have PC class levels, so they don't get them automatically.

This means only a minority (not all peasants are human, not all humans are variant humans) can take feats at all, and many of them will choose other feats (depending on aptitude and training). It's not like the NPCs get to pick their feats at character creation out of a book--they get what they get based on personality, training, and experience.

Also, most would, in my opinion, choose the class they're most inclined towards--devoutly religious NPCs choose cleric, scholarly ones choose wizard, etc.

The idea of giving NPCs feats isn't a bad one though, or at least the abilities from them. They represent the training you can pick up in addition to your class abilities.

We shouldn't assume that everybody has a feat, one in ten or twenty people might have one, one in a hundred might have two, less than one in a thousand have enough training to qualify for three.

Therefore, in 5e we can assume that most peasant spellcasters do it via a feat.

I'm actually going to say village magic and city magic take different forms. In a city you have thousands of people and at least hundreds with feats, which means we can assume we have a good number of people with spells, say 50-100 in our random city of thousands (but not tens of thousands). With the large number of people in a city peasant spellcasters can afford to be more specialised, picking up a couple on cantrips they use every day and a 1st level spell they pull out occasionally. Eventually this sort of minor magic becomes more common, as people start training multiple apprentices, forming a middle class that uses minor magic, a working class with no magic, and an upper class with good magic (level 2 spells and higher).

Meanwhile, in a village you don't have the large numbers of people required to make initiates a worthwhile investment. Therefore instead of a bunch of different people you go to depending on the cantrip or spell you need you have a couple of people who can cast rituals (the local wise man and their apprentice). This takes more time and doesn't have a lot of useful cantrips and spells, but it is more versatile, which is important when we have only a couple of spellcasters within a week's walk.

Vogie
2017-10-06, 08:32 AM
That's technology though, not magic. The main difference between the two is that technology can be made user-friendly. One of magic's defining traits (at least in D&D) is that it should require some kind of uncommon quality to use - whether that is intense study, a unique lineage, singular piety, divine intervention or something else that the majority of people aren't capable of. There is a passage in 3.5's Complete Arcane about this quality, and it is further borne out in the DMG population tables.

And in a game where magic is as common as high technologies, like the examples I gave in the same post you quoted, it would make perfect sense. Magic's "uncommon quality" is only there if the DM decides it is so in their world. Literacy was an uncommon quality until it wasn't. Think of how fast magic would enter the society if the local hedge wizard held Sunday school and taught the children like the Catholics of yore? Divine intervention is uncommon until the gods intervene. Unique lineages aren't always unique - in the Real world there are millions decedents of Genghis Khan, 0.5% of the 7 billion people on the world... and that was in 2003. Even in the 13th and 14th centuries, there were tens of thousands of monks all across Western Europe alone.

Listen, if you want to have a game where magic is locked down, have fun. I really don't care. Why you're trying to argue against how fun a game is when magic is more available is beyond me. If you want magic tied to a single tiny group, and have a single wizard in all the land, very Tolkien-style, it doesn't offend me. I would just see that as a waste of perfectly good worldbuilding. If you want your character(s) to be destined to be the chosen one(s) rising above a population of (relative to the party) imbeciles, that's fine, but I have every right to roll my eyes and think it's overdone and dull.

Psyren
2017-10-06, 08:48 AM
And in a game where magic is as common as high technologies, like the examples I gave in the same post you quoted, it would make perfect sense. Magic's "uncommon quality" is only there if the DM decides it is so in their world. Literacy was an uncommon quality until it wasn't. Think of how fast magic would enter the society if the local hedge wizard held Sunday school and taught the children like the Catholics of yore? Divine intervention is uncommon until the gods intervene. Unique lineages aren't always unique - in the Real world there are millions decedents of Genghis Khan, 0.5% of the 7 billion people on the world... and that was in 2003. Even in the 13th and 14th centuries, there were tens of thousands of monks all across Western Europe alone.

Listen, if you want to have a game where magic is locked down, have fun. I really don't care. Why you're trying to argue against how fun a game is when magic is more available is beyond me. If you want magic tied to a single tiny group, and have a single wizard in all the land, very Tolkien-style, it doesn't offend me. I would just see that as a waste of perfectly good worldbuilding. If you want your character(s) to be destined to be the chosen one(s) rising above a population of (relative to the party) imbeciles, that's fine, but I have every right to roll my eyes and think it's overdone and dull.

I'm not saying you're wrong to buck those genre conventions, I'm just explaining (a) why they exist in the first place and (b) why I personally find them appealing. By all means make your world as magitech/accessible (though I would also add "homogenous") as you want - I'm not here to stop you, even if I somehow could.

Max_Killjoy
2017-10-06, 01:42 PM
This sounds pretty awesome. I hope you post about it further sometime.


I like very restrained alchemy and herbalism being the magic level for my lowly hamlets. A 0th level Priest with a cantrip or two would be a very special person in such a place. A witch in the forest is a good reason to NEVER go there. It evokes the feel of classic fairy tales, which I like.

There will eventually be more over in my "4th Century BCE" thread.

WarKitty
2017-10-07, 02:15 AM
I'm not sure D&D is the best system for widespread magic. Partly because of the lack of detail to non-combat magic, but also because of the way spells work - by and large, you know a spell, so you can just cast it.

Traditional folk magic tended to be much more ritualistic in nature. Peel an apple in one strip and throw it over your left shoulder, and you will see the first letter of the man you are destined to marry. Cut the right thread on the loom and the life of your enemy will be cut short. Call your child "ugly" or "stupid" until his fifth birthday to prevent evil spirits from getting jealous. The rituals had to be done right or else, and the effects of simple magics were not usually powerful - less powerful than a D&D cantrip.

jayem
2017-10-07, 03:07 AM
Traditional folk magic tended to be much more ritualistic in nature. Peel an apple in one strip and throw it over your left shoulder, and you will see the first letter of the man you are destined to marry. Cut the right thread on the loom and the life of your enemy will be cut short. Call your child "ugly" or "stupid" until his fifth birthday to prevent evil spirits from getting jealous. The rituals had to be done right or else, and the effects of simple magics were not usually powerful - less powerful than a D&D cantrip.

But that's presumably also a consequence of them only working by chance (and similar placebo effects).
If there actually was magic then things might be different (although if there is a divide what you might find is that you have folky equivalents of real magic for non-magic users)

WarKitty
2017-10-07, 04:41 AM
But that's presumably also a consequence of them only working by chance (and similar placebo effects).
If there actually was magic then things might be different (although if there is a divide what you might find is that you have folky equivalents of real magic for non-magic users)

Not entirely. See, if magic is based on ritual rather than innate ability, it becomes much more widespread, but you still would see specialists.

Anyone can do a ritual, you don't need some sort of special innate talent or bloodline. However, the lower-level rituals aren't very powerful. The more powerful the ritual, the more complex it is, and the more likely to have your face melted off or something if you don't do it exactly right. Or have your love potion gain you a mindless obsessive stalker instead. Basically, anyone can learn a few simple rituals as related to what they do. But more serious rituals tend to be left to those who have the time to really study how to make them work safely. They also tend to be expensive in one way or another, so there's encouragement to not cast spells when a mundane way of doing things works.

jayem
2017-10-07, 05:48 AM
Not entirely. See, if magic is based on ritual rather than innate ability, it becomes much more widespread, but you still would see specialists.

Anyone can do a ritual, you don't need some sort of special innate talent or bloodline. However, the lower-level rituals aren't very powerful. The more powerful the ritual, the more complex it is, and the more likely to have your face melted off or something if you don't do it exactly right. Or have your love potion gain you a mindless obsessive stalker instead. Basically, anyone can learn a few simple rituals as related to what they do. But more serious rituals tend to be left to those who have the time to really study how to make them work safely. They also tend to be expensive in one way or another, so there's encouragement to not cast spells when a mundane way of doing things works.

You could easily artificially produce some system to produce something vaguely equivalent to 'folk magic'.
I fully support that the 'economics' of a given system are different in a village and town.

But the initial post I applied suggested that 'real world folk magic' was a thing. And a significant thing about 'real-world folk magic' is that it has to be believable in a universe where it doesn't actually work. Whereas 'fantasy world folk magic' does work (potentially, they may actually have non-working elements as well where they are wrong). So statements like "Traditional folk magic tended" can't be proscriptive, there isn't a right or wrong 'fantasy folk magic' till we bring a system in or connect it to the world (then of course it can conflict-if it tries to bring 'real work folk magic' through the descriptions and spells through the mechanics or clashes with the economics or ...).

[ETA - I'm sure the situation posited would make sense as a game world, with nice features and few bad consequences - if working love potions were easy, society would be a lot more cautious]

WarKitty
2017-10-07, 06:20 AM
You could easily artificially produce some system to produce something vaguely equivalent to 'folk magic'.
I fully support that the 'economics' of a given system are different in a village and town.

But the initial post I applied suggested that 'real world folk magic' was a thing. And a significant thing about 'real-world folk magic' is that it has to be believable in a universe where it doesn't actually work. Whereas 'fantasy world folk magic' does work (potentially, they may actually have non-working elements as well where they are wrong). So statements like "Traditional folk magic tended" can't be proscriptive, there isn't a right or wrong 'fantasy folk magic' till we bring a system in or connect it to the world (then of course it can conflict-if it tries to bring 'real work folk magic' through the descriptions and spells through the mechanics or clashes with the economics or ...).

[ETA - I'm sure the situation posited would make sense as a game world, with nice features and few bad consequences - if working love potions were easy, society would be a lot more cautious]

You do have a point there. I'm just saying, there's other ways magic could work (and does work in various systems as well as much fantasy) than Vancian casting. And vancian casting is probably one of the least suited to peasant magic.

Even in real world folk magic, many magics were believed to be very powerful. People really did believe witches could cause crop failure, or a shaman could curse someone and they would fall ill and die. These magics tended to also often be believed to be dangerous - you respected the witch-doctor, but you didn't go visit him very often because the spirits were scary. More powerful spells also often had a tendency to involve somewhat unethical actions, even in societies that didn't view the practice of magic as unethical per se. You really didn't want to know what went into a love potion.

I've been working on meshing a mortal-accessible magic system with a WoD hunter game, so this has been on my mind a lot.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-10-07, 10:47 AM
You do have a point there. I'm just saying, there's other ways magic could work (and does work in various systems as well as much fantasy) than Vancian casting. And vancian casting is probably one of the least suited to peasant magic.
I agree that D&D 3.5-style Vancian casting isn't that well-suited to peasants, mostly because of the hour-long prep time on a couple of castings of prestidigitation and unseen servant. However, since D&D typically only uses Vancian casting for educated, academic spellcasters (wizard, cleric, druid, wu jen, etcetera), I don't think commoners/peasants are going to make use of the system. They'll be using SLAs or spontaneous casting (no preparation), or possibly a variant on invocations, soulmelds, and whatnot. For example, the master smith who has a special forging meld, channeling the souls of his ancestors to get +4 on Craft checks.

WarKitty
2017-10-07, 03:49 PM
I agree that D&D 3.5-style Vancian casting isn't that well-suited to peasants, mostly because of the hour-long prep time on a couple of castings of prestidigitation and unseen servant. However, since D&D typically only uses Vancian casting for educated, academic spellcasters (wizard, cleric, druid, wu jen, etcetera), I don't think commoners/peasants are going to make use of the system. They'll be using SLAs or spontaneous casting (no preparation), or possibly a variant on invocations, soulmelds, and whatnot. For example, the master smith who has a special forging meld, channeling the souls of his ancestors to get +4 on Craft checks.

It's not the preparation system that's the issue, but the spell slot issue. The default in D&D is that you have slots of X levels and you can cast Y spells for them. Generally, once you know X spell, you can cast it with little prep (at most the hour-long prep time you mentioned). Magic is very much a case of you either have it or you don't, and once you have it you have it and you can't really fail at it. D&D cantrips are also actually fairly powerful in many ways, that just tends to be obscured because of how insane D&D magic gets.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-10-07, 05:29 PM
It's not the preparation system that's the issue, but the spell slot issue. The default in D&D is that you have slots of X levels and you can cast Y spells for them. Generally, once you know X spell, you can cast it with little prep (at most the hour-long prep time you mentioned). Magic is very much a case of you either have it or you don't, and once you have it you have it and you can't really fail at it. D&D cantrips are also actually fairly powerful in many ways, that just tends to be obscured because of how insane D&D magic gets.
That's not really a part of the Vancian system, though. For instance, Harry Potter-style magic is very easy (and, consequently, very common), as is Wheel of Time-style magic, or even Lord of the Rings-style magic (which is nebulous, but once you have it, you project it almost just by virtue of being who you are).

In any case, that's how regular peasant life works. You 'take 10' on your daily tasks. Peasants aren't typically meant to do high-pressure high-variance things, they do boring stuff that just works. If you did need to use your measly spell under pressure, there'd be a Concentration check, with all the possibilities of failure that entails. Heavy wind and rain, for example, would force a DC 5 check (20% chance of failure for a typical no-Concentration ranks peasant casting a cantrip), and dust/hailstorms would force a DC 10 check (45% chance of failure).

WarKitty
2017-10-07, 08:23 PM
That's not really a part of the Vancian system, though. For instance, Harry Potter-style magic is very easy (and, consequently, very common), as is Wheel of Time-style magic, or even Lord of the Rings-style magic (which is nebulous, but once you have it, you project it almost just by virtue of being who you are).

In any case, that's how regular peasant life works. You 'take 10' on your daily tasks. Peasants aren't typically meant to do high-pressure high-variance things, they do boring stuff that just works. If you did need to use your measly spell under pressure, there'd be a Concentration check, with all the possibilities of failure that entails. Heavy wind and rain, for example, would force a DC 5 check (20% chance of failure for a typical no-Concentration ranks peasant casting a cantrip), and dust/hailstorms would force a DC 10 check (45% chance of failure).

Even normal peasant tasks have a lot of variance, and they require time and material investment. You can't just focus really hard and a few moments later a pot pops into existence out of the ether. If you're good and you know what you're doing, you can make a decent pot pretty reliably. But you still have to sit there and go through the process of making a pot. You can attempt more complex pottery, and depending on your skill it might or might not work. Taking 10 is highly abstracted because D&D doesn't really focus on stuff outside of combat.

That's why D&D-style magic is so different. Once you've learned the spell, it just works, and it works pretty much instantaneously with no or minimal input of materials.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-10-08, 07:50 AM
Even normal peasant tasks have a lot of variance, and they require time and material investment. You can't just focus really hard and a few moments later a pot pops into existence out of the ether. If you're good and you know what you're doing, you can make a decent pot pretty reliably. But you still have to sit there and go through the process of making a pot. You can attempt more complex pottery, and depending on your skill it might or might not work. Taking 10 is highly abstracted because D&D doesn't really focus on stuff outside of combat.

That's why D&D-style magic is so different. Once you've learned the spell, it just works, and it works pretty much instantaneously with no or minimal input of materials.
I don't see the big difference. Other magic systems are as easy and as reliable. Technology is as easy and as reliable. With widespread D&D magic, your setting advances technologically, as you'd expect when additional tools and abilities become available. D&D is perfectly well-suited to widespread magic use.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-08, 09:15 AM
I don't see the big difference. Other magic systems are as easy and as reliable. Technolog is as easy and as reliable. With widespread D&D magic, your setting advances technologically, as you'd expect when additional tools and abilities become available. D&D is perfectly well-suited to widespread magic use.

D&D cantrips (5e or Pathfinder version) are fine, they're always reliable and not too powerful.

Otherwise D&D has the problem of, RAW, most casters will get one or two 1st level spells a day, and nothing higher. This means that building a business based on spells of 1st level or higher is going to be rare, as you can only perform your job once to twice a day (on the other hand, combining a cantrip for most work and a 1st level spell for problems is probably good).

Now, where D&D magic is reliable and easily useful is with magic items. Drop the prices of wondrous items by a factor of ten or two and suddenly you have a lot of people who own one or two to help with their job (likely not peasants, who earn one or two gp per year, but a middle class would be able to pass a handful down the family). Now if we take the book ones we're not recreating modern technology, but we do get a very different society.

While I love wizards, I have to admit they're the worst spellcasters for the general world. I think in 5e bards are better at representing what the average 'wizard' is, someone with a good number of spells but not spellbooks upon spellbooks, with basic combat skills but nothing too major. 20ish major spells and a number of minor ones. Compare the Bard to the Sorcerer and the Sorcerer's magic isn't actually too shabby (could do with more spells, but it's nothing like the prepared casters*).

* Who effectively get a larger spells known list that they can change day to day.

WarKitty
2017-10-08, 09:26 AM
I don't see the big difference. Other magic systems are as easy and as reliable. Technolog is as easy and as reliable. With widespread D&D magic, your setting advances technologically, as you'd expect when additional tools and abilities become available. D&D is perfectly well-suited to widespread magic use.

A better way to put it is that D&D isn't really suited to wide-spread magic use while still retaining the standard medieval world. If a lot of people are running around casting D&D-style spells, you're not going to keep the faux medieval world very long. You're probably not going to keep anything I'd identify as "peasants", honestly.

Satinavian
2017-10-08, 09:38 AM
I don't see the big difference. Other magic systems are as easy and as reliable. Technolog is as easy and as reliable. With widespread D&D magic, your setting advances technologically, as you'd expect when additional tools and abilities become available. D&D is perfectly well-suited to widespread magic use.
Most other magic systems have less focus on combat (also meaning more non-combat spells and better balancing for non-combat applications for spells) and some better developed model of magic theory.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-10-08, 11:35 AM
A better way to put it is that D&D isn't really suited to wide-spread magic use while still retaining the standard medieval world. If a lot of people are running around casting D&D-style spells, you're not going to keep the faux medieval world very long. You're probably not going to keep anything I'd identify as "peasants", honestly.
You could, easily. It wouldn't look like NW European history exactly, but that's because history generally lacks magic. I mean, if your complaint is that adding widespread magic makes the world less familiar, I can only say: Yeah. It does. That's what you get when you add new fundamental forces to the universe. But if you want a society with widespread magic, at a tech level similar to that of a pseudo-medieval society, you would simply add less non-magical technology. For example, instead of inventing 26 different woodworking files, we have only 8 different files, and magecraft (and probably a lot of variants of that spell, but you just use different verbal components to express that).

Don't add magical technology to nonmagical technology. Replace, and the overall tech level stays the same.


Otherwise D&D has the problem of, RAW, most casters will get one or two 1st level spells a day, and nothing higher. This means that building a business based on spells of 1st level or higher is going to be rare, as you can only perform your job once to twice a day (on the other hand, combining a cantrip for most work and a 1st level spell for problems is probably good).

Now, where D&D magic is reliable and easily useful is with magic items. Drop the prices of wondrous items by a factor of ten or two and suddenly you have a lot of people who own one or two to help with their job (likely not peasants, who earn one or two gp per year, but a middle class would be able to pass a handful down the family). Now if we take the book ones we're not recreating modern technology, but we do get a very different society.
The 1/day limit isn't such a problem. Plenty of spells have good durations/big consequences, even at CL 1. For example: alarm, endure elements, enlarge person, magecraft, mount, speak with animals, and unseen servant. All good first-level spells, and that's just the PHB (+magecraft). You're not building a business on them anymore than you're building a business on just tools, but you can use them to make your business much more efficient.

Does not, of course, change the fact that magic items are really sweet, even at full price. I point you to this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19417465&postcount=22) old post of mine.



I want to point out that this started with the assertion that D&D (3.5) isn't well-suited to common-magic setups (WarKitty has amended this, but let's talk the original). I'd posit that the exact opposite is the case: D&D isn't well-suited to low-magic setups, even at level 1, and the default assumptions D&D makes about NPC class distributions and tech levels do not match the consequences of the spellcasting rules. If you think D&D is going to get you a low-magic world, you have been misled! (sneaky, sneaky developers working for the magitech lobby, I just know it!)

PhoenixPhyre
2017-10-08, 12:10 PM
I want to point out that this started with the assertion that D&D (3.5) isn't well-suited to common-magic setups (WarKitty has amended this, but let's talk the original). I'd posit that the exact opposite is the case: D&D isn't well-suited to low-magic setups, even at level 1, and the default assumptions D&D makes about NPC class distributions and tech levels do not match the consequences of the spellcasting rules. If you think D&D is going to get you a low-magic world, you have been misled! (sneaky, sneaky developers working for the magitech lobby, I just know it!)

I agree (especially in regards to 3.5e). Of course, this depends on the PC spell-casting rules also applying verbatim (or nearly so) to NPCs. Since this is the norm in 3.5, that fits. If magic items are that easy to create (a low level caster, some gold, and some time nets a permanent item), magic items should be everywhere. If magic is that easy to learn, there should be bunches of 1st level casters (not just wizards, but all sorts of casters).

I think part of the setting dissonance issue (especially with established settings like FR, Greyhawk, etc) is that they were originally designed under very different assumptions about the ease and reliability of magic and then inertia and the unwillingness to blow everything up and start again prevents changes for later editions. OD&D had very different assumptions about how easy magic is to do. No cantrips, no easy learning of spells, no expectation that NPCs are built the same as PCs. IIRC, Forgotten Realms started with AD&D 1e if not earlier. Still, very very different magical environment once you look past the "uses vancian spell slots" surface similarities. 4e tried the "fundamentally restructure the setting" thing, but we saw how well that was received. 5e tries to go back to "magic items are hard" while basic magic is weak but common (many of the 1st level spells you mention have been weakened or removed in 5e, and access to spell-casting is much more restricted as most NPCs don't have class levels). It doesn't make it all the way--even a "low magic" 5e setting will still not be very low magic on an absolute scale.

Vogie
2017-10-09, 09:45 AM
I agree (especially in regards to 3.5e). Of course, this depends on the PC spell-casting rules also applying verbatim (or nearly so) to NPCs. Since this is the norm in 3.5, that fits. If magic items are that easy to create (a low level caster, some gold, and some time nets a permanent item), magic items should be everywhere. If magic is that easy to learn, there should be bunches of 1st level casters (not just wizards, but all sorts of casters).

I think part of the setting dissonance issue (especially with established settings like FR, Greyhawk, etc) is that they were originally designed under very different assumptions about the ease and reliability of magic and then inertia and the unwillingness to blow everything up and start again prevents changes for later editions. OD&D had very different assumptions about how easy magic is to do. No cantrips, no easy learning of spells, no expectation that NPCs are built the same as PCs. IIRC, Forgotten Realms started with AD&D 1e if not earlier. Still, very very different magical environment once you look past the "uses vancian spell slots" surface similarities. 4e tried the "fundamentally restructure the setting" thing, but we saw how well that was received. 5e tries to go back to "magic items are hard" while basic magic is weak but common (many of the 1st level spells you mention have been weakened or removed in 5e, and access to spell-casting is much more restricted as most NPCs don't have class levels). It doesn't make it all the way--even a "low magic" 5e setting will still not be very low magic on an absolute scale.

As someone who started D&D with 3.5 & PF, I personally see no disconnect between a "normal" setting having a handful of magic users even in the smallest township, even in 5e. Sure, the bulk of the magic will be in the high halls, but it's also out there in the world - not in the Vancian Spell Slot form, but in a specialty for whatever they're doing. The local doctor & handyman in the mining town may just be a first level bard, one of the bandits may have a sorcerous bloodline, the town mayor may have a Silver Raven figurine that comes with the position.

That also allows you to flavor the world with "magic items" that a normal player can't (or won't) use. Fieldhands that have Ioun stones that provide a breeze and ward off dehydration and Scythes that magically bind wheat into sheaves. Guards that use iron rope as a type of handcuffs. Locals rocking hex nail necklaces because there may or may not be a witch in the woods. Enchanted masks for use in the forge that keep the eyes and face safe. Fence planks enchanted to repel water and goat-based damage. Gloves that increase the speed that one can fletch arrows. Divining rods that indicate the best place to dig a well. And so on.