In the Beginning…Were There Ninth-Level Spells?

[Palanan]

Are there any campaign settings, from any publisher, which have a history that includes the progressive development of more powerful spells over time? In other words, a history in which only lower-level spells were available at first?

In the setting I’m most familiar with, the Forgotten Realms, it’s more the reverse, with uber-high-powered magic available in ancient times, until Karsus accidentally brought down the Netherese cities and the goddess of magic instituted a hard ceiling on the magic available to ordinary mortals.

So what I’m looking for is the opposite—a setting in which the oldest cultures had only the simplest spells, which over thousands of years were built upon until society reached the default spell levels described in the PHB and CRB. Are there any settings like this, from any 3.X publisher?

[ngilop]

Are there any campaign settings, from any publisher, which have a history that includes the progressive development of more powerful spells over time? In other words, a history in which only lower-level spells were available at first?

In the setting I’m most familiar with, the Forgotten Realms, it’s more the reverse, with uber-high-powered magic available in ancient times, until Karsus accidentally brought down the Netherese cities and the goddess of magic instituted a hard ceiling on the magic available to ordinary mortals.

So what I’m looking for is the opposite—a setting in which the oldest cultures had only the simplest spells, which over thousands of years were built upon until society reached the default spell levels described in the PHB and CRB. Are there any settings like this, from any 3.X publisher?


I mean.. by your parameters that doesn't exist. You cannot take a kingdom of mythicla arcane might at the height of their powers then say "they do it in reverse" when it took generations to get up like that. I mean netheril didn't start out of the gate casting world shattering epic spells they started and expanded on their knowledge.


Are you just wanting a society where the spells after thousands and thousands of generations never got any more powerful?

[Elves]

For arcane spells this should be true in any setting where magic is scientific or technological, except that even in those settings the advanced ancient civilization is a common trope.

The main question would be how divine magic could advance over time. Most simply, theological study could be a real and serious thing -- people had to learn and develop ever more sophisticated rituals to establish contact with the divine, maybe got their first knowledge of the gods from planar bound outsiders and that led to an ever greater ability to connect with the god you worship (maybe the "pact" between clerics and their gods that allows the dispensation of spells is actually a recent invention).

Other answers could include "increases in divine connection" based on religious ceremonies that become more powerful based on participants (so that the advent of cities and later mass society allow establishing a greater connection to gods) or on being able to build grander shrines/temples/sacred sites. Or you could have the mortal world's connection to the gods/Outer Planes wax and wane, whether that's because of "celestial cycles" or the arrival of certain prophets or messengers sent by the gods or so on.

[Mechalich]

One thing that's important to remember is that there are creatures in 3e that just get spellcasting all the way up to 9th level spells. Dragons are the most obvious, but there are some others. As a result, arcane magic isn't discovered so much as it is reverse-engineered into wizardry from innate sorcery as wielded by other creatures. So once the initial threshold is broken through to unlock wizardry, arcane study would advance very, very quickly. But this is all dependent upon fiat and the dragons not paying very much attention to the puny mortals suddenly acquiring spellcasting.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ngilop
Are you just wanting a society where the spells after thousands and thousands of generations never got any more powerful?

No, not at all, and I may not have explained it very well.

I’m really looking for the reverse of what you’re saying—a setting in which the gradual development of more powerful spells is laid out in its history. This is sort of vaguely assumed in many settings, but as Elves points out, the advanced ancients are a staple of the genre, and there's usually not much detail about what came before them.


Originally Posted by Elves
*snip*

These are some excellent ideas, especially the notion of a series of prophets providing access to greater spellcasting over time.


Originally Posted by Mechalich
One thing that's important to remember is that there are creatures in 3e that just get spellcasting all the way up to 9th level spells. Dragons are the most obvious, but there are some others.

Good reminder, thanks.


Originally Posted by Mechalich
So once the initial threshold is broken through to unlock wizardry, arcane study would advance very, very quickly.

But would it, though? Even if theory can predict higher-level spells, in practice they may be extremely difficult to achieve. Knowing Kepler’s Laws opens a window onto orbital mechanics, but that’s a long way from engineering a lunar lander.

[tiercel]

Are there any campaign settings, from any publisher, which have a history that includes the progressive development of more powerful spells over time? In other words, a history in which only lower-level spells were available at first?

In the setting I’m most familiar with, the Forgotten Realms, it’s more the reverse, with uber-high-powered magic available in ancient times, until Karsus accidentally brought down the Netherese cities and the goddess of magic instituted a hard ceiling on the magic available to ordinary mortals.

So what I’m looking for is the opposite—a setting in which the oldest cultures had only the simplest spells, which over thousands of years were built upon until society reached the default spell levels described in the PHB and CRB. Are there any settings like this, from any 3.X publisher?

I tend to think of most fantasy settings (D&D or otherwise) being more in the vein you describe; famously the Greyhawk setting has the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire which annihilated two entire rival empires. Generically, it’s often hard to find a fantasy setting in which you can adventure very long and not stumble over an ancient crypt/ruins/artifact/leftover from the “First Days,” when magic was if anything, even mightier.

I suppose I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t tried to write a campaign setting that was basically The First Age, when civilization and technology, much less magic, were still new, when there literally are no ruins to find because the first real settlements are being constructed.

Having said that, while it potentially makes sense for wizardly arcane magic to progress gradually along “learning how the tech of magic works,” it is less clear (as posters above have pointed out) that other forms of magic - divine, or innate such as sorcerers or creatures with like-sorcerer or like-cleric casting or SLAs, much less other systems like psi or incarnum or binding or whatever - would necessarily have progressed along a Civ-style “tech tree” of figuring magic out. You could have a different reason, like the “magic potential” of the world inherently has changed over time (cf. Elves’s post), because of planar/environmental conditions or even just as there are a greater number of sapient beings, there is more raw magic potential associated with their very lifeforce or whatever.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by tiercel
I suppose I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t tried to write a campaign setting that was basically The First Age, when civilization and technology, much less magic, were still new, when there literally are no ruins to find because the first real settlements are being constructed.

I've seen at least one setting like this, years ago, possibly called Dawn something-or-other, in which the world had just been created and the PCs were the very first heroes. Can't recall much more about it, but the concept seemed interesting.

Also, Osprey's gaming offshoot is about to publish Paleomythic (https://www.amazon.com/dp/147283481X/), which is very much along the lines you describe. But even there, in a setting described as "the dawn of history," there are ancient temples and ruins.

[Crake]

Personally, I think power should be based on the individual, but complexity based on the society/academia. So an individual could gather a lot of personal power, and be about to perform outrageously powerful acts of magic without any significant formal training (read: sorcerer), but without any sort of training, the spells would be incredibly simple (think cone of cold, fireball, burning hands etc). However, with research, and experimentation, that powerful magic could be harnessed into something more complex, like creating a tear through space with dimension door, or summoning a mass of tentacles with evard's black tentacles, or creating a living construct of ice with conjure ice beast.

A good way to represent that is with pathfinder's words of power, where you can use simple words to produce basic effects, or later on combine words for more complex effects, and then finally, at the later stages, allow for actual structured spellcasting with researched and completed spells.

[Droid Tony]

Are there any campaign settings, from any publisher, which have a history that includes the progressive development of more powerful spells over time? In other words, a history in which only lower-level spells were available at first?

In the setting I’m most familiar with, the Forgotten Realms,

Well, no, not really. The 'core' spell lists have been known from the dawn of time in just about all campaign settings. Some settings are low magic type settings so they have somewhat less magic, but not in the way your talking about.


Way back in 2E they did have the Arcane Age mini setting, where you could travel back in time to places like Netheril. And one of the time travel rules was you could not use magic spells that had not been invented yet. For example in Netheril you could not use any spell created by Elminster.

[Tectorman]

This is, at best, d20 peripheral, but there's a setting/game system called World Tree that does exactly this. The game has rules for how spells were originally formulated and cast (as well as rules for modeling the most ancient of magical artifacts), but it explicitly makes these methods simplistic in what they can do and grossly inefficient in terms of time and effort to learn and to cast. Magic items from these ancient times are likewise unimpressive and more valuable for their archaeological importance than what they can do (akin to an ancient Chinese firework next to an ICBM).

Using magic in the game's default way (that is to say, the methods that have been researched and built up over generations of study to become the magical knowledge of the present day) allows for more complex effects that are drastically easier to learn and quicker and less energy-intensive to cast.

[Telok]

I recall plaing a short of a d20 called... Dawnforged, I think. Rather underwhelming, jankey magic mechanics.

[Fizban]

No matter how much they might try to pretend it comes from blood or prayer or study, magic in 3.5 comes from one thing: levels. Saying that higher level spells didn't exist at some point requires directly messing with the classes in a way that apparently doesn't apply "today."* If there were high level people, and those people could be casters, there there were high level spells.

Now, the prevalence of those spells is much more of a question. High level spells are already far less prevalent than some people give credit for under 3.5 city generation (thanks to settings like FR): there are a guaranteed minimum number of NPCs of level X and thus spells of level Y, but the number of people is extremely small and what they do with those spells is up to them. If there are no cities large enough to produce high level spellcasters, then the only high level spellcasters are those specifically designated by the DM (and the PCs), who probably have very specific stories about how they got all those levels.

Considering the fact that the oldest cultures would begin from the tribal progression (see MM humanoid organization entries), and then progress to smaller population centers, and finally a few cities would get big enough to support/attract/etc a few high level casters, the mechanics already support a slow progression of societal magic over time.

*The most elegant method of which I'd say would be d20 Modern's, where spellcasters are 10 level prestige classes you can't take until 5th, which go up to 5 levels of casting. Essentially normal base casters, but you can't start or multiclass in. This would cause a significant shift in dnd combat expectations, as the monsters still expect a certain amount of magic, so you're either 5 levels behind, or your meatguys are 5 levels ahead.

[GrayDeath]

I dont think that I have played such a setting, unless you count SHadowrun (ergo ignore the immortal leftovers of the previous age).


But my second homebrew setting went kinda that way.

In the age the heroes played in, while the true awesome power of the ancients was USUALLY out of reach (exception for the 3 Champions and some remaining Dragons), the precision, flexibility and simply Evolvedness of Magic was MUCH further.

SO much so that when the group encountered one of said ancients (a over 80000 years old Dragon) they managed to beat him by using magics he didnt know/understand to counter his overwhelming powers.

If that helps?

[Telonius]

I don't know if there's an official one, but you could look at the stories about Atlantis to craft one up. First mention of it in Plato, it's just a particularly powerful kingdom, but over time the stories got inflated that we have them running around with crystal power and hovercraft, if not outright space travel. The ancient kingdom might have had something like second or third-level spells, but its reputation got built up over the millennia, so that people are convinced they had artifact-level crafting.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tectorman
This is, at best, d20 peripheral, but there's a setting/game system called World Tree that does exactly this.

Really cool, thank you. Is this (https://www.amazon.com/World-Tree-Playing-Species-Civilization/dp/1890096105) the one?


Originally Posted by Telok
I recall plaing a short of a d20 called... Dawnforged, I think. Rather underwhelming, jankey magic mechanics.

This looks interesting, thanks. Not sure if this is what I was thinking of, but looks like a well-thought-out setting. Apparently it was a runner-up to Eberron in the Wizards setting search.

Here’s a pretty favorable review (https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10087.phtml) from 2004, not long after Dawnforge came out.

In the setting I'm thinking of, the world had just been created, the PCs were the very first heroes, and they were essentially making it up as they went along, so the players' decisions had a lasting impact on the setting and its mechanics.


Originally Posted by Fizban
If there are no cities large enough to produce high level spellcasters, then the only high level spellcasters are those specifically designated by the DM (and the PCs), who probably have very specific stories about how they got all those levels.

Another good reminder. A lot of discussions seem to assume there are scads of high-level casters in any given game setting, often conveniently willing to enable whatever’s being discussed. But yes, the actual default is for extreme rarity of upper-level casters.

This is especially interesting in the context of Golarion, since many of the “major cities” have oddly small populations given their importance in the setting. Magnimar is a key location in Rise of the Runelords, but it has only about 16,000 residents.


Originally Posted by GrayDeath
SO much so that when the group encountered one of said ancients (a over 80000 years old Dragon) they managed to beat him by using magics he didnt know/understand to counter his overwhelming powers.

Kids these days. :smalltongue:

But very cool, that must have been a great moment in the game.


Originally Posted by Telonius
The ancient kingdom might have had something like second or third-level spells, but its reputation got built up over the millennia, so that people are convinced they had artifact-level crafting.

Great idea on the power of legend, I like it.

As far as Atlantis having crystals and floating ships, etc., is that a strictly 20th-century invention? I haven’t paid much attention to Atlantis lore, so not sure when all the crystal-powered bits were added.

Crystals were popular in some 80s SF (i.e. Crystal Singer, Outlander, etc.) and I dimly remember some hokey “special” on Atlantis from that time, invoking a crystal-powered defense system as a reason for the Bermuda Triangle (seriously), so maybe that’s when the crystals became part of the lore?

[ericgrau]

One thing that's important to remember is that there are creatures in 3e that just get spellcasting all the way up to 9th level spells. Dragons are the most obvious, but there are some others. As a result, arcane magic isn't discovered so much as it is reverse-engineered into wizardry from innate sorcery as wielded by other creatures. So once the initial threshold is broken through to unlock wizardry, arcane study would advance very, very quickly. But this is all dependent upon fiat and the dragons not paying very much attention to the puny mortals suddenly acquiring spellcasting.

This pretty much.

1e had further fluff about how difficult it was for humanoids to retain the knowledge of magic even after learning it IIRC, as it had a nasty habit of disappearing from the mind, and it had fluff about how they found work-arounds to this problem.

[Telonius]

Great idea on the power of legend, I like it.

As far as Atlantis having crystals and floating ships, etc., is that a strictly 20th-century invention? I haven’t paid much attention to Atlantis lore, so not sure when all the crystal-powered bits were added.

Crystals were popular in some 80s SF (i.e. Crystal Singer, Outlander, etc.) and I dimly remember some hokey “special” on Atlantis from that time, invoking a crystal-powered defense system as a reason for the Bermuda Triangle (seriously), so maybe that’s when the crystals became part of the lore?

19th-century invention. I can't get into the details due to forum rules (lots of very icky ideological connections). But the interpretation of Atlantis as a technologically advanced culture mostly started when Ignatius Donnelly published a book about it in 1882 (Atlantis: the Antediluvian World). It was picked up by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society in the late 1880s, and it kind of snowballed from there.

[Florian]

Are there any campaign settings, from any publisher, which have a history that includes the progressive development of more powerful spells over time? In other words, a history in which only lower-level spells were available at first?

Golarion would qualify. Ok, this is mostly based on the fluff that you can´t find in the online sources:

Most important, the designers make it clear that "magic" as we find it in the rules and magic, as represented by the fluff are not one and the same, that spells are only there to simplify the matter.

- Basically, the Dragons got curious about their own innate magic abilities and used a scientific approach to it, slowly deciphering some of the underlying rules, thereby slowly creating the Words of Power.

- The ancient Humans also approached this in a scientific way and developed technology alongside "arcane magic". While they came up with the concept of the "spell", as in using the Words of Power in a pre-packaged way, their main focus was on creating "magic items". So quite a lot of the spells they developed directly deal with items or emulate items, like creating force swords and such.

- The Rune Lords were loony cultists that got driven out of their original land and colonies because they were mostly fanatics. They also started with the knowledge of "spells" and Word of Power, but re-developed and re-engineered those to fit their not-so-scientific world view. Hence the focus on symbols and emotions.

- Present day Golarion is more a patchwork of rivaling concepts, based on what could be plundered from the diverse groups of ancients.

So while "magic" was always there and always in full force, each age had to work with what they could plunder from the previous one and had to start to develop their brand and understanding of magic anew again.

[Efrate]

This is kind of baked in wizards already. Spells take x pages per spell level. A 5th level spell takes 5 pages crammed with all manner of caster specific notation, and the casting thereof is actually a long process that you complete when you cast as a standard action. Which then disappears from your mind.

Since each apprentice creates their own magic language as they do their apprenticeship this varies as their minds struggle to capture and comprehend the esoteric secrets that make magic work. Without that specific written record they cannot cast.

Read magic all wizards know and can prepare from memory which actually is curious and potentially the simplest spell, but also in its grasp of the laws of magic the most accurate and potentially powerful.

The reverse engineering of sorcerer or innate casting also allows for the variety of spells. An innate caster would take something simple like fireball, but a wizard refined the specific fireball into scorching ray and other spells. Also how sorcerers should not have situational niche spells spells but broad strokes general spells.

Cleric power is easy, as the gods got stronger because of more worshippers they could do more and grant more.

Druids are the odd man out, because by the previous assumptions current druids are more in tune with nature than more primitive people who lived and worked closer with it.

Other subsystems likely flowed in at different paces. Incarnum and pact making were likely the first two. Each use the soul in different ways, giving it away or manipulating it directly, or taking power from others with necrocarnum which lends itself to discovering binding pretty naturally.

They likely developed in tandem each one taking from the other and shifting the focus as needed. But I am kind of salty and just really want a totemist/binder theurge. MoI mentions it is an ancient "magic" in the fluff and some description. Binding deals with things lost and forgotten in ancient times. It might have developed much later than incarnum but there are a lot of parallels that make me think otherwise.

Psionics en masse likely came after early wizardry. Though psionics are innate like sorcery, they result from a developed mind which seems like something that would happen after wizardry starting really trying to plumb the depths and reverse engineer innate casting.

My 2 copper.

[nedz]

This is sort of how it works in my own setting. In the beginning the gods, and their servants, were all powerful; but, gradually, the mortals, first the elves, worked out how to compete.

This dates back to AD&D when spontaneous arcane casters were not quite so prevalent. I haven't re-worked this for 3.5 because it's never come up.

[Jay R]

It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t a published module, but every campaign running in 1975 had a version of this.

Original D&D only had up to 6th level Magic-User (arcane) spells and 5th level Cleric (divine) spells. The first supplement, Greyhawk, expanded that to 9th and 7th.

[Where I was playing, it didn’t affect the spells we could cast directly, since none of us were 13th level yet, but it certainly improved the quality of scrolls in treasures. The expanded list of magic items in Greyhawk also improved the treasures we found.]

It wasn’t reflected in any published modules, because they didn’t exist yet. But in pretty much all 1975 campaigns, the level of spells that existed went up in the middle of the campaign.

[Fizban]

In the age the heroes played in, while the true awesome power of the ancients was USUALLY out of reach (exception for the 3 Champions and some remaining Dragons), the precision, flexibility and simply Evolvedness of Magic was MUCH further.

SO much so that when the group encountered one of said ancients (a over 80000 years old Dragon) they managed to beat him by using magics he didnt know/understand to counter his overwhelming powers.
Ignoring the given age, this is also pretty effectively present in the base rules. Dragon spell casting is far less than that of the spellcasting PCs when they're an appropriate level to fight one- the younger and faster learning and developing PCs will have higher level spells than the centuries old dragon. A PC can't match the raw strength, hit points, natural armor, or infinite breath weapon blasting- but teamwork and access to advanced spells and painstakingly crafted and accumulated magic items make the difference.

Even the final tier dragons that go to 19th level casting have CRs way above 20, which means they're either overleveled vs the party, or the party could be developing epic spells (and while lots of people like to use overleveled "boss" dragons, that's not actually design feature). In fact, of the chromatic dragons, only reds can reach 9th level spells at all (metallic all get their because Good I guess).

The thing I find most interesting about this paradigm is that dragons aren't even all that long-lived. MM1 gives 1,200+ which sort of implies a lack of cap, but Draconomicon once again has the antagonist chromatics all around 2,200. Sure that's a lot when our known history is something like 3,000 years (and only because we went and dug up what we could), and they spent half of it at maximum power (again, no 9ths outside the red), but the big published setting example of Forgotten Realms? Has a ridiculous timeline with somewhere around 10,000 years since the rise of humanoid empires (and another 20,000 before that with the "creator" races and whatnot). Even if dragons had kids after age 2,000, the oldest dragons today would be an absolute minimum of five generations removed from the original humanoid empires. And before that their power accumulation is free, but slow, with Adult showing within 100 years but still within striking range of even city generated heroes.

Real life has had a number of fallen empires, but many of them are outside of anything but the arbitrarily longer metallic dragon ages for first hand witnessing, and FR has stuff long, long out of even their past.

So even for dragons, "long lost magic of a fallen empire," is still "stuff my dad told me about but I've probably never seen." And at the same time, the magic of even a Small City of 5,000+ already exceeds that of an Adult Gold or Red Dragon of 100 years (a Large Town can rival them with good rolls), by simple stint of accumulating 1HD humanoids to bounce off each other and practice their own magic. The only way for a dragon to exceed their natural limits is by gaining a bunch of levels, but by adulthood there's barely anything to challenge their LA- it takes a child dragon joining an adventuring party to frontload some extra sorcerer levels before retreating for a few hundred years to actually get one with seriously advanced spells.


It's also a natural feature of splabtook creep vs monsters designed with PHB+this book only. Dragons and other monsters with access to (particular PHB) spells only can be entirely flattened/broken/etc by some splatbook spell that did not exist when they were written, as I am fond of pointing out. Monsters do expect access to Resist and Protection from Energy, and Antilife Shell is a spell that exists, but there's no such thing as PC energy immunity in the PHB. You can get both effects at a discount with Antifire Sphere from Sandstorm, which will make the entire party both immune to fire and untouchable by a Red Dragon- the dragon's only hope is to beat the PCs with stuff that's not their dragon-ness, or run away. Of course, most DMs build their dragons specficially with the all the books they use and the PCs in mind, so this doesn't happen for dragons, which don't actually have generic entries. But there are other monsters with innate casting that have MM spell loadouts that are laughable by no-holds-barred optimization standards, because they have only a specific set of PHB-only spells chosen for them. Rakshasa and Coutals are outsiders and thus ageless, with innate sorcerer casting and premade spell loadouts, and if the DM uses them as-written against PCs made with more books the monsters will automatically be facing against "more advanced magic."

[King of Nowhere]

I tend to think of most fantasy settings (D&D or otherwise) being more in the vein you describe; famously the Greyhawk setting has the Invoked Devastation and Rain of Colorless Fire which annihilated two entire rival empires. Generically, it’s often hard to find a fantasy setting in which you can adventure very long and not stumble over an ancient crypt/ruins/artifact/leftover from the “First Days,” when magic was if anything, even mightier.

I suppose I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t tried to write a campaign setting that was basically The First Age, when civilization and technology, much less magic, were still new, when there literally are no ruins to find because the first real settlements are being constructed.


my homebrew setting is that, because i am quite sick of the "advanced ancestors" trope.

the problem with that - and the reason every setting has advanced ancestors - is that it becomes much harder to have proper adventuring. "there are ruins from the old empire, they may contain forgotten magic" is one thing. "there are ruins from the old empire, they may have some archeological value" is hardly reason for adventuring. "you must find the sword of your ancestor, it is a powerful artifact" is a plot hook. "you must find the sword of your ancestor, it is a pile of crap by modern standards" hardly is. I knew of this when I set up the campaign, and i designed it mostly as a urban fantasy, but still it was surprisingly difficult to come up with adventures. sometimes I wanted to put some traditional dungeons, and i always had to resort to excuses; from "someone got in and disappeared, investigate" to "it is the lair of monsters that are attacking the nearby villages, go clear it" to even "they set up this whole thing and there is paying public watching you through the glass ceiling, welcome to this sport event".
But none of those lairs are really grand in scope. an ancient civilization works much better to provide plot hooks. too bad it's been done to the death.

[Tectorman]

Really cool, thank you. Is this (https://www.amazon.com/World-Tree-Playing-Species-Civilization/dp/1890096105) the one?

Yep. The game where the universe is literally a tree with branches bigger than most planets, going down infinitely far, and where raccoons, dogs, otters, pseudodragons, and floating octopi are your standard adventuring party.

[Clementx]

Since all wizard spells must have been developed at some point, there was a time when the only X-level spells were in the research notes of a single wizard. Create a setting history where spellcasters did not cooperate or establish lasting traditions, and high level magic essentially becomes non existent. Wizards have to take what few spells they know, and metamagic the **** out of them using their higher level slots. Could be interesting, nevermind terrifying to be first person to anger Evard...

Perhaps you could stretch the development of arcane magic over hundreds of years, mirroring the progress of science in RL. If the earliest dragons are maturing at the same rate, then you have spontaneous casting advancing as well.

Another option is that magic gets easier to perform the more it is used in the environment. The Weave or whatever needs to be loosened up by centuries of charm person before charm monster is possible. Kind of a metaphysical version of emergent technology.

[RatElemental]

I'm not aware of any official publications, but I did run a campaign kinda like that once. All magic flowed from truespeech in one way or another: Essentially, if you thought of truespeech as programming in assembly, wizardy was programming in c++, complete with magical infrastructure being in place to make that even possible to do.

[Tvtyrant]

Lost Empires of Magic actually has the year by year explanation of when Netheril invented different spells. They basically had cantrips before the Elves, they learned a smattering of better spells from them, and when they found the Nether Scrolls they learned the scientific process for making new spells.