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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Sometimes I think about how different people would be growing up around magic... socially, culturally, personality etc. We typically insert variations of "real world" cultures into fantasy stories, but things would likely be quite different.

    One small example of something that has no parallel to the real world... having spellcasting parents.

    For example, imagine a kid growing up with a parent that can magically "detect lies", or compel truth, or something like that. How would that impact the kid? Would he grow up thinking that lying is impossible, and just not lie? Would he become highly skilled at being misleading without technically lying? Would he rebel and become a compulsive liar when he isn't at home?

    Bump that up to a societal level, and what if the legal system used lie detection when assessing guilt? Sure the "high level" individuals that could resist the magic would avoid this inconvenience... but what about petty crime. Would it be easy to wipe out petty crime? Or would the people that can cast those spells ignore petty crime and focus their abilities on addressing larger issues?

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Seems like the field of Psychology might have gained traction far earlier in such a society...

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    The gazetteers concerning Glantri and especially Alphatia (for Mystara) do touch on this, at least concerning the use of magic in social and legal systems. Less so in how people react when growing up surrounded by it other than to note that magic is mundane to those countries. As far as ending crime, hardly. Punishment and methods of sussing out culprits doesn't really stop criminals. You still need people doing the work of finding the suspects and interrogating them, and there are generally more criminals than LEOs. Not to mention that half the population of Alphatia is on drugs and Glantri bears a passing resemblance to Paranoia with 9th level spells.

    Rokugan, to take a very different setting, is fairly magical in that it is known and among the elite of society somewhat common (very common if you're Phoenix) but it is also an expression of religion and devotion, and due to ancient manipulation by the Scorpion inadmissable as evidence in legal cases and severely frowned upon in investigations in general. It is not so common that most people would have it readily available and those that do would definitely not frivolously use it for determining if children are lying.

    From personal experience:
    One of my player's had his character make a permanent Rary's Telepathic Bond with her son. Her husband wasn't too pleased with this, since he considered it basically violating the kid's autonomy but left it. She ended the link pretty soon once the kid constantly wanted mommy's attention and she couldn't get a moment's peace.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Honestly things like how often spells can be cast per day by lower level characters would make it rare to use on a day to day basis. But serious sit down conversations with your folks having detect lies may be the import thing of the day for mom or dad. So i could see that being a rare but critical think. Also without still spell and silent spell feat things could be awkward as they obviously prep for it.

    In other ways, having one parent who can cast and another who can not could lead to weird attachment issues or how the kids view their parents.

    also with how small children can have issues with what parents can and can't do (or at least enough of them) I could see parents who can cast being hard for them to deal with. Imagine mom can change the world in certain ways other people can't but only sometimes (depending on what spells are prepped that day). Could leave a kid off...I mean imagine a bratty kid demanding prestidigitation being used to clean their room...I could see it getting right annoying in whole new ways.

    Also paranoia around casters for things like charm person,

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    All I know is that, if I could cast Sleep, my evenings would get a LOT freer.
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    For example, imagine a kid growing up with a parent that can magically "detect lies", or compel truth, or something like that. How would that impact the kid? Would he grow up thinking that lying is impossible, and just not lie? Would he become highly skilled at being misleading without technically lying? Would he rebel and become a compulsive liar when he isn't at home?
    Probably not much would change, but what would changes depending on the person. Sorry, but when you factor in how rarely most spellcasters in most settings can cast their spells and how much people differ there is no one size fits all answer.

    Bump that up to a societal level, and what if the legal system used lie detection when assessing guilt? Sure the "high level" individuals that could resist the magic would avoid this inconvenience... but what about petty crime. Would it be easy to wipe out petty crime? Or would the people that can cast those spells ignore petty crime and focus their abilities on addressing larger issues?
    Oh boy, again, it depends. A lot.

    Partially on what magic is available. If the only magic available is creating illusions of monsters from cards not a whole lot will change. But it's pretty clear that you're basing this on D&D, and not one of the many other fantasy RPGs out there.

    Again, it depends. Man, I really need to make a picture for that phrase.

    In short, a society that has achieved magical post-scarcity probably either doesn't have petty crime or doesn't feel the affects of it significantly. They'll focus on larger crimes unless a petty crime spree grows large enough to start affecting resources. It's not clear cut, but the more that everything is available due to magic the less temptation there is to do crime (but there is always temptation), so we can make a generalisation that it isn't a major problem. There's probably procedures for when crimes happen, but it's probably not as high a priority as keeping the magical food production going.

    In a less magically advanced society? It depends, but magic is probably a supplement to other investigation methods, instead of an outright replacement. If somebody says they're innocent while in a Circle of Truth are they innocent, or did they just pass their Will Save?
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    All I know is that, if I could cast Sleep, my evenings would get a LOT freer.
    My kids went to bed at 2100. At 2300, my daughter is finally asleep.

    But, on the "magic is common and used a lot" front, look at settings which have done that. The two that come to mind are Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar, and Steven Brust's Dragaera.

    Valdemar has relatively common mind magic, and many who have mind magic are brought into an order of do-gooders called the Heralds. All Heralds are chosen and accompanied by magic, intelligent, horses, who have their own network of communication. All heralds are trained in the "Truth Spell", which they can lay on people to prove truth, or compel truth. It's a progressive country, so the compelling version is less frequently used, but there's a TON of magic EVERYWHERE. They have a college at their capital city, which trains Healers (actual magic healers, as well as doctors and herbalists), Bards (ranging from "I am a good musician and/or composer" to "I can control your emotions with my song and even stave off the pain of chronic illness), and Heralds, as well as Engineers and the various sons and daughters of nobility. Outside of Valdemar, and in more modern Valdemar*, they have more formal magic, where a single magician can learn a large number of spells, as opposed to the mind magic, which works more like a special power that an individual has.

    Dragaera, OTOH, goes WAY further. The main empire, every citizen can learn and use magic. Most learn simple things like "keep rain off my head", but "bring someone back from the dead" is common enough that the assassins of the House Jhereg have a sliding scale based on how dead you want a person... do you want them dead but revivifiable, dead without revivification, or do you want us to destroy their soul so they never can be reincarnated? While most of the "elves" are members of this Empire, where most of the action takes place, some "humans" are, too, including the main character of most of the novels. Need to teleport over to another city on the other side of the continent? Well, some sorcerers specialize in teleportation. They either have been to the place themselves, or they can be in instant psychic contact with a friend who HAS, and they'll tell them how to get there.

    Those are just two super-magic societies I can think of in fiction. When magic permeates a society, it's not much different than when technology does so, however... because most book magic is a kind of technology.

    *Misty and her husband Larry have been telling stories in Valdemar's world for 30+ years, and have covered a lot of ground. They go into some of the world's mythic age of ancient Mage-Kings who created new life forms. Some of the historically oldest stuff, though, is about Herald-Mage Vanyel, who prevented the use of real magic in the kingdom for something like 800 years... while in the most historically recent stuff, Herald-Princess Elspeth learned of her own magical talents and returned to Valdemar to lift that ban. Time-wise, they've spent most of the last decade writing at a period about midway between those two, when the Heralds changed from an apprenticeship system to a fully founded collegium.
    Last edited by LibraryOgre; 2019-11-16 at 12:13 AM.
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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    D&D and prepared casters specifically, spell slots are a limited resource and have to be locked in at the beginning of the day. Presumably, caster parents will also have a day job that expects certain spells to be cast and others to be had on hand just in case. In other words, it becomes more difficult for a caster family member to have just the right spell on hand unless they prepared for it ahead of time.

    Other D&D casters, as well as magic users in most other settings, have more specific (if more freely accessible) powers. Magic in such settings also tends to pass along familial lines, so junior is unlikely to be a muggle. Depending on specificity of magic, the best sources are either Harry Potter or The Incredibles.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    In something like 5e where you could cast cantrips endlessly, every parent everywhere would want a level in a class that allowed you to cast prestidigitation. Dirty nappy: clean nappy with a flick of the fingers... or dirty laundry: clean laundry generally ... and that's just for starters. Baby cries in the middle of the night? Light a candle rather than stumble over to them in the dark. Cold food: warm food. Parlor tricks to entertain a toddler. Etc.
    Last edited by paddyfool; 2019-11-16 at 04:07 AM.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post

    In short, a society that has achieved magical post-scarcity probably either doesn't have petty crime or doesn't feel the affects of it significantly. They'll focus on larger crimes unless a petty crime spree grows large enough to start affecting resources. It's not clear cut, but the more that everything is available due to magic the less temptation there is to do crime (but there is always temptation), so we can make a generalisation that it isn't a major problem.
    There is a post-scarcity magical society we can use to make inferences, and it's our own.
    One of the things we can infer is that there is no such thing as post scarcity. We have food and housing and clean water and healtcare available to everyone, that would have been considered post-scarcity in any other time. We simply found other things to covet.

    And we have magic, though we don't call it that. We can take a bit of hair and determine to whom it belongs. We have enough security cameras to put scrying sensors to shame.

    And we still have petty crime. Because you don't call in the CSI to find out who stole a wallet. You don't sift through hundreds of hours of camera footage to find a jaywalker.
    So, we have crime that us mild enough that it's not worth using magic on it.
    And then we have white collar crime. Crime that escapes notice - you rarely see someone embezzling money, unless they take things too far. Or crime where it's difficult to even figure out whether there is any crime, like some shady financial tricks.
    But we have little violent crime. Even if the media are ripe with it, it's almost absent compared to other historical societies. Because that's the kind of crime where it's easy to use technomancy on, that's bad enough to justify involving some high level technomancer for a dna analysis.
    Back in the cold war we also had state-sanctioned crime from spies. Those can get away because they are trained for it and are helped by a foreign powers. And that is what i used for plot points in my high magic game
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    All I know is that, if I could cast Sleep, my evenings would get a LOT freer.
    That's certainly the sort of thing that I'm thinking about... but then what are the consequences of this? How does this change people?

    My kids are older, but I remember those days... if I had used a "sleep" spell on them every time there was an issue, would the child grow up and become an adult that has problems with insomnia because they never learned how to sooth themselves to sleep naturally?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    But it's pretty clear that you're basing this on D&D, and not one of the many other fantasy RPGs out there.
    Nah, I haven't played D&D for years, but I figured D&D spells would be something that most people could relate to. I guess using Harry Potter type magic would have been something people could relate to as well.

    In a less magically advanced society? It depends, but magic is probably a supplement to other investigation methods, instead of an outright replacement. If somebody says they're innocent while in a Circle of Truth are they innocent, or did they just pass their Will Save?
    You will never know, but you can weed out the guilty ones that have a low Will save quickly. Think of it as a first pass in a multi-stage process.

    Quote Originally Posted by Anymage View Post
    Depending on specificity of magic, the best sources are either Harry Potter or The Incredibles.
    Yes those are good examples, and they didn't get too deep into it. Sure they looked at the superficial level of "if we had magic, we would do this for daily chores", but they didn't get into the deeper question of how that would impact people growing up like that. Harry Potter did a bit, but I think we could go much further.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    And we still have petty crime. Because you don't call in the CSI to find out who stole a wallet. You don't sift through hundreds of hours of camera footage to find a jaywalker.
    Yes, we would have to sift through hundreds of hours, but with magic you could get the answer out of people right away.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    It's an interesting question, but it might not actually have much of an influence. Lots of good replies already in this thread, especially that a setting with magic is not so much different from modern society. I want to add to two points:

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    All I know is that, if I could cast Sleep, my evenings would get a LOT freer.
    Well, you can. Chloroform, Alcohol, good old knock to the head and they will sleep. But you don't (I hope) as this is considered child abuse in our society. And I could very well imagine that casting speels on your child against their will would be considered the same in a society where magic exists.

    Similar consideration for truth magic: Yes, you could cast a truth detection spell on your kid, but would it not teach them that you don't trust them? Compare that to putting a GPS tracker on your child, same kind of consideration.

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    If somebody says they're innocent while in a Circle of Truth are they innocent, or did they just pass their Will Save?
    This. I remember a setting (I don't know if it was official or homebrew) where magic was disallowed in judicial processes exactly due to this unreliability. Add in the possibilities to magically protect yourself from truth magic, plus the possibilities to hide that you are using magic at all, and magic does not change much about crime.

    Again, this can be compared to the possibilities we have today. There is a number of "truth drugs", but they are not allowed to be used in a court of law, due to both being unreliable and the right of an accused to not incriminate themselves. The same would hold true for truth magic.

    Edited to add

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid
    You will never know, but you can weed out the guilty ones that have a low Will save quickly. Think of it as a first pass in a multi-stage process.
    This is an especially scary example. Basically you are saying: If I cast truth detection on someone and they say they are not guilty, they must be lying and have passed their will save. On the other side, if they say they are guilty under a spell they could claim that the spell was not actually a detection but a coercion spell. Who could prove otherwise? And finally they may have passed the will save and have lied (saying they are guilty) to protect someone else.
    Last edited by Firest Kathon; 2019-11-17 at 05:00 AM.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Small thought: if a parent had access to healing magic (eg healing word, cure light wounds etc) would their child be at risk of never learning proper caution around sources of injury (i.e. subverting the old "burned hand teaches best" rule), because they learn that minor injuries can be wiped away with a quick spell?

    (Thinking of how I've heard that rates of some injuries in adults have increased after children's play areas were made safer...)

    And is this how some people grow up to be low-armoured frontline fighter types, heedless of the risk of injury and expecting their spellcasting buddies to immediately heal them if it occurs? :-P
    Last edited by paddyfool; 2019-11-17 at 05:24 AM.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post

    This. I remember a setting (I don't know if it was official or homebrew) where magic was disallowed in judicial processes exactly due to this unreliability. Add in the possibilities to magically protect yourself from truth magic, plus the possibilities to hide that you are using magic at all, and magic does not change much about crime.
    then again, if you don't use magic because it can be subverted, what exactly are you using to find truth in a trial?

    50 witnesses recognized the defendant? it may have been someone else with a disguise self. or maybe those 50 witnesses had their memories altered.
    we found his footprints, fingerprints, and his clothing full of blood? Please, do you have any idea how easy that is to fake with magic? even if i can't think of lower level solutions, a clone should do it just fine.
    the victim recognized the assassin and let him in? again, disguise self.
    we really are sure this guy did the crime? ok, but perhaps he was mind dominated. if you don't allow to discuss this in a court of law, it would be very easy for a wizard to enthrall hapless people to do his bidding.

    magic is just like technology in that regard. you can't avoid the problems associated with it by just not using it, because someone else will use it, and will screw you up with it if you don't.
    Last edited by King of Nowhere; 2019-11-17 at 10:04 AM.
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    then again, if you don't use magic because it can be subverted, what exactly are you using to find truth in a trial?

    50 witnesses recognized the defendant? it may have been someone else with a disguise self. or maybe those 50 witnesses had their memories altered.
    we found his footprints, fingerprints, and his clothing full of blood? Please, do you have any idea how easy that is to fake with magic? even if i can't think of lower level solutions, a clone should do it just fine.
    the victim recognized the assassin and let him in? again, disguise self.
    we really are sure this guy did the crime? ok, but perhaps he was mind dominated. if you don't allow to discuss this in a court of law, it would be very easy for a wizard to enthrall hapless people to do his bidding.

    magic is just like technology in that regard. you can't avoid the problems associated with it by just not using it, because someone else will use it, and will screw you up with it if you don't.
    This is why spellcasters should be regularly burned, drowned, or stoned to death. It keeps the rest to scared to abuse their power.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    What would it be like to grow up with technology-using parents? From the medievaloid view of a D&D world, we all had that.

    And we all grew up differently.

    Television, radio, computers, cell phones and other technologies have had huge effects on our childhoods.

    And we still all grew up differently.

    Yes, there are similarities, leading to general categories like boomers, Gen X, Millennials, etc. But nobody predicted their characteristics in advance; we had to grow up and people actually witnessed what characteristics we had in common.

    And even within these categories, we all grew up differently.

    And there are more distinctions to make. Millennials who grew up in Manhattan, California suburbs, Texas small towns, Iowa farms, and other subcategories in other countries that I don’t know enough to describe well, have shared characteristics that differ from group to group. [In a few minutes of conversation, I can generally tell small town hill country Texans from small town East Texans or small town west Texans.]

    And even within those subcategories, we all grew up differently.

    I conclude that any of the ideas we’ve come up with might happen to some people who grow up with spellcasting parents are, that none of them will apply to all such children, and that none of us can successfully predict the general tendencies of Gen Hex.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    The frequency of the spells is what makes the difference in terms of impacting the kid, and that makes it more comparable to real-world circumstances.

    - A child who is allowed to watch TV is considered perfectly normal parenting. A child who watches TV all day (TV as "the babysitter") is considered poor parenting, but not actively abusive. A caster who entertains their kid with illusions is merely showing them an option for entertainment, vs one who sticks them in front of a permanent image.

    - Some parents sedate their children for long international plane flights. This is generally considered acceptable, because the unique nature of the circumstances justify it. A parent who chloroforms their child to sleep on a nightly basis would be considered abuse. A caster who makes the children Sleep when they are sick, distressed, and need the rest is actively doing good parenting. A caster who casts Sleep on the children on a nightly basis or whenever they annoy her is abuse.

    - A parent who GPS tracks their teenage daughter's cellphone because she hasn't come home in two days and they don't know where she is would seem normal. A parent who continuously monitors where their daughter is at every moment of every day is going to create resentment at the least. A caster who casts Discern Lies under unique circumstances ("You seem distant, and I found drugs in your room. What's going on?") is intrusive but in a caring parent way. A caster who routinely Discerns Lies every time they ask their kid how their day was is in the same basket as someone who hires a private detective to follow their child around.

    - Circumstances matter. The President's child have Secret Service bodyguards because they are considered exceptionally at risk owing to their position and connection. The Prince is obliged to wear his Ring of Spell Turning because of the threat to him. This doesn't change how the average middle-class family or farmers treat their kids.

    - Caster Mum casts Create Food and Water regularly. The kids will take away an understanding that this is the "normal" way of getting food (and that food tastes like bland slop). They'll probably lose interest in food, and struggle to learn to cook for themselves. Real World Mum orders takeaways on a nightly basis. The kids learn that Uber Eats is where food comes from, and spend a lot of money on it later in life. The same for somebody who hires a maid or has an Unseen Servant - house cleaning just sort of happens on it's own. The kids will rapidly understand that this is not the way everybody does it - because they have friends whose Mum cooks for them - but they will normalise the way their family does it as the "normal" way, in the same way that women being the traditional stay-at-home makes a stay-at-home Dad seem unusual (because most families don't do it this way).

    The kids will be affected by it, no doubt, but no more so that regular real-world parenting.

    If magic is sometimes used around or against them, they'll learn that's just a part of how the world works. Sometimes kids go on vacation, but do not expect every day to be a tropical island visit.

    If magic is routinely used around them (Unseen Servant), they'll come to accept that as normal, and may have some adjustments to make later in life (when they discover they can't afford a maid because their student job doesn't pay as well as Dad's six-figure job).

    If magic is routinely used against them, they'll get some psychological issues. If Dad regularly beats the children with a belt to get them to go to bed and be quiet, later in life they'll associate a bed with bad things and have trouble sleeping, more likely to hit their own children, etc. If Mum Baleful Polymorphs them into a rabbit and makes them sleep in a rabbit cage as a punishment for not cleaning their room, they'll become obsessive about cleaning.

    It's hard to say exactly how they'll react - in much the same way children who are abused have problems, but not a precise template of what will happen to them.

    Broadly, the kid will generally react in one of three ways to being abused by magic once they're grown up:
    - Copy their parental model. Become a spellcaster. Routinely use magic to abuse other people.
    - Rebel against their parental model. Learn to hate magic. Lie to everyone, just because you can now.
    - Become ground down and accepting of the status quo. Learn to always do what Mum says. Be unhealthily attached to your parents, with several weird and unhealthy behaviours. Do what magic users tell you. Flinch every time you lie. Struggle to sleep naturally. Pray obsessively. Never learn to cook.

    Good topic, OP! Fun to ruminate on.
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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    All I know is that, if I could cast Sleep, my evenings would get a LOT freer.
    Don't tease me like that! I'd also take an unseen servant to clean up all the toys.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brookshw View Post
    Don't tease me like that! I'd also take an unseen servant to clean up all the toys.
    I intend to try using the lore and dice to make chores a tad more fun. Like, you must offer dirty laundry to the froghamper, lest it grow hungry and seek to swallow the clothes you're wearing with you in them. Or, eat your spinach - it wards against Drow mages. Apparently, Sleep irl requires a glass of milk, two stories, a potty break, and a slow rendition of Sweet Child O' Mine to overcome all resistances.

    Unfortunately, Comprehend New Math is a tenth level counterspell requiring shouted verbals and material components of ripped paper, freshly ground tooth enamel, and several fistfuls of hair from your own scalp. You must invoke the names of both the teacher who cursed you and whatever jagoff that came up with this asinine curriculum while pounding your dining room table with your fists.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    This is an especially scary example. Basically you are saying: If I cast truth detection on someone and they say they are not guilty, they must be lying and have passed their will save. On the other side, if they say they are guilty under a spell they could claim that the spell was not actually a detection but a coercion spell. Who could prove otherwise? And finally they may have passed the will save and have lied (saying they are guilty) to protect someone else.
    Being scary doesn't stop societies form implementing such things... I'm not arguing that it would be a good thing, I'm just curious about the social implications. Good point about lying about guilt and passing the save. I hadn't considered that angle.

    Quote Originally Posted by paddyfool View Post
    Small thought: if a parent had access to healing magic (eg healing word, cure light wounds etc) would their child be at risk of never learning proper caution around sources of injury (i.e. subverting the old "burned hand teaches best" rule), because they learn that minor injuries can be wiped away with a quick spell?
    Yes, yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that I was getting at.

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    then again, if you don't use magic because it can be subverted, what exactly are you using to find truth in a trial?

    50 witnesses recognized the defendant? it may have been someone else with a disguise self. or maybe those 50 witnesses had their memories altered.
    we found his footprints, fingerprints, and his clothing full of blood? Please, do you have any idea how easy that is to fake with magic? even if i can't think of lower level solutions, a clone should do it just fine.
    the victim recognized the assassin and let him in? again, disguise self.
    we really are sure this guy did the crime? ok, but perhaps he was mind dominated. if you don't allow to discuss this in a court of law, it would be very easy for a wizard to enthrall hapless people to do his bidding.
    Interesting take... here I was suggesting that magic could help identify guilt, but you point out how it might actually make it much harder.

    I don't think that people would go to that effort to block evidence of petty crime (my initial comment)... but at the same time, a spellcaster could in theory commit petty crimes to amuse him/herself and frame someone else.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    I conclude that any of the ideas we’ve come up with might happen to some people who grow up with spellcasting parents are, that none of them will apply to all such children, and that none of us can successfully predict the general tendencies of Gen Hex.
    But overall at a society level things would have an impact. Boomers are quite different than Millennials, partially because of the different technology when the were young. Not ALL boomers, and not ALL Millenials behave the same, but the overall culture is different when you have a group of people.

    So what would Gen Hex look like at a generalized level. Sure we can't know, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate.

    Quote Originally Posted by Reversefigure4 View Post
    Good topic, OP! Fun to ruminate on.
    Thanks, and lots of good examples.

    You hint at a few things that I can relate directly to the real world... but probably shouldn't talk about for fear of pushing the boundaries of the forum rules about real world issues.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Well, you can. Chloroform, Alcohol, good old knock to the head and they will sleep. But you don't (I hope) as this is considered child abuse in our society. And I could very well imagine that casting speels on your child against their will would be considered the same in a society where magic exists.
    Not...really. Chloroform, alcohol, and beating children over the head all can cause long-term/permanent damage, and risk death. The sleep spell does no such thing, and is in fact harmless if nobody capitalizes on the helplessness it entails. I'm pretty sure nearly every modern parent has done some version of "let's give Billy some benadryl before bed tonight." Not something you want to overdo, lest it interfere with ability to sleep on their own (and that WOULD be an interesting character quirk: "Mom cast sleep on my every night for years; now I can't sleep without it."), but unless you add drawbacks not present in the text like that, using sleep on your kid at night wouldn't be child abuse.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Similar consideration for truth magic: Yes, you could cast a truth detection spell on your kid, but would it not teach them that you don't trust them? Compare that to putting a GPS tracker on your child, same kind of consideration.
    This is a silly one, though. "I can't doubt my kid's word; that would mean I don't trust him!" So you'd never check to see if the toothbrush is damp after he claims he brushed his teeth, or examine his hands after he claimed to wash them, or ask to see his completed homework after he claimed to have done it, or look at his report card rather than just asking him what he got in his classes?

    Kids lie. It's one of many behaviors they engage in to avoid things they don't want to do/have happen (e.g. getting in trouble).

    The use of truth spells would be one of those things that's just part of your tool kit as a parent. You want the child to value honesty in its own right, so you extend trust when they earn it, but there's no point in refraining from its use when you deem it important that you know whether your child is being truthful.

    Frankly, I don't see a problem with a GPS tracker, either. Ideally, one that can be turned off for privacy reasons. But when they're young, knowing where they are is a safety feature. Letting them have control over it later on, as they get older, is one of those rites of passage, equivalent to modern-day letting the kid go off on his own rather than needing to constantly have a parent or babysitter or similar authority with them at all times.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    This. I remember a setting (I don't know if it was official or homebrew) where magic was disallowed in judicial processes exactly due to this unreliability. Add in the possibilities to magically protect yourself from truth magic, plus the possibilities to hide that you are using magic at all, and magic does not change much about crime.
    The biggest reason to disallow such magics in judicial process - at least legitimate ones, rather than "har har I criminal want get away with things" - is if the unreliability means that you get false positives.

    As an example, if "truth spells" work by telling the caster if the target is lying, the question can be raised as to whether the caster is telling the truth, himself. Godfather Giolious has bribed, extorted, or blackmailed the Court Spellcaster into claiming that Fighter Bob is lying when he says he personally saw Giolious and his men murder Bob's father. Further, when Bob is asked if he killed his own father to inherit the magic sword he now wields, the Court Spellcaster claims Bob is lying when he denies it!

    Sure, the Court Spellcaster knows that Bob didn't lie once while under the spell, but who're you going to believe, the Court Spellcaster, who is an Officer of the Court, or Bob who has just been revealed to be a liar and a murderer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Again, this can be compared to the possibilities we have today. There is a number of "truth drugs", but they are not allowed to be used in a court of law, due to both being unreliable and the right of an accused to not incriminate themselves. The same would hold true for truth magic.
    The right of the accused not to incriminate themselves is another matter, and a good point.

    Historically, by the by, this comes from a reaction to the practice of essentially torturing people until they confessed, and demanding that they answer questions until something incriminating came out. Our modern take on it is a little bit disingenuous, in fact, since screws are metaphorically applied to people who refuse to confess, with increasingly hefty charges and associated legal expenses applied. And the fact that somebody answering questions - in good faith or not - can have his own words used against him. As a "gotcha," if nothing else.

    The truth drugs would fail in the face of a right against self-incrimination, as would a "compel the truth" spell, because it would force them to answer rather than allowing the oft-damning-anyway "I refuse to answer on the grounds I may incriminate myself" or "I plead the 5th [amendment to the US constitution]." A simple "you can't lie" field (or lie-detection spell) is no...worse...than putting somebody under Oath, though. Instead of taking their word for it and punishing them if they break it, you can just confirm whether they're telling the truth or not. Or prevent them from speaking an untruth. Neither of which would break at least modern treatment of the right against self-incrimination, since the one being questioned could always refuse to answer.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    This is an especially scary example. Basically you are saying: If I cast truth detection on someone and they say they are not guilty, they must be lying and have passed their will save. On the other side, if they say they are guilty under a spell they could claim that the spell was not actually a detection but a coercion spell. Who could prove otherwise? And finally they may have passed the will save and have lied (saying they are guilty) to protect someone else.
    All of these are further reasons why such magics would not be considered definitive.

    I doubt they'd be "inadmissible," except by precedent of how easily challenged they are, though. In other worse, less likely to be inadmissable by virtue of violating rights, and more likely to be inadmissable in practice by virtue of the fact that they almost never actually help come to a conclusion and they cost money that the prosecutor doesn't want to have to justify.

    I imagine, though, that if the caster can sense whether the save was made or not, spells like zone of truth would be something that a defendent could ask to have a private meeting (with his lawyer present) with the prosecutor to attempt to short-circuit a case.

    "My client is prepared to submit to an off the record questioning under a zone of truth. I, of course, will be present, and you may bring your own staff and a caster of your choice. We will bring our own to equally verify that nobody is lying about who's casting what and whether anybody is resisting the spell. He will attest to his innocense, and provide any answers he can pertinent to the case, though he reserves the right to refrain from answering if he or I deem it in his best interests not to."

    The DA eyes the defense lawyer. "So he'll just refuse to answer if he dosn't want us to know the answer? Why should we bother with this farce?"

    "My client is innocent, and expects your line of questioning will satisfy you of his innocence. We do reserve his right to unreasonable search and seizure should we deem your questions veer into such territory."



    Essentially, if the accused really is innocent, and the DA is on the up-and-up, such pre-trial meetings could save both sides a lot of time and hassle.

    "I didn't do it. I don't know who did it. I didn't arrange for it to be done, and to my knowledge I am not in any way complicit in the crime being investigated." Provided the truth-detector knows he didn't make his save, that's a pretty exonnerating statement, and unlikely to trip him up by making him unable to say it due to complicity in other crimes not in question.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post

    Interesting take... here I was suggesting that magic could help identify guilt, but you point out how it might actually make it much harder.

    I don't think that people would go to that effort to block evidence of petty crime (my initial comment)... but at the same time, a spellcaster could in theory commit petty crimes to amuse him/herself and frame someone else.
    actually my take is a bit different. what i'm saying is that once somebody can use magic to cover his tracks on a crime scene, then not using magic is not really an option. sure, magic can be fooled by other magic, but mundane means can be fooled much more easily. the only possibility is to use more powerful magic and escalate, and hope it's enough.

    in my campaign world they do that, and they really go medieval on powerful adventurers committing serious crimes. that's because
    1) society would collapse if powerful people could go murderhobo without control
    2) society doesn't have the resources to deal with them on a regular base

    so, society spend a lot of resources to stop powerful wizards tampering with the system. and they do so to make a point that trying leads to retaliation... because if too many powerful wizards did it, society wouldn't be able to defend itself.
    In memory of Evisceratus: he dreamed of a better world, but he lacked the class levels to make the dream come true.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Well, you can. Chloroform, Alcohol, good old knock to the head and they will sleep. But you don't (I hope) as this is considered child abuse in our society. And I could very well imagine that casting speels on your child against their will would be considered the same in a society where magic exists.
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Not...really. Chloroform, alcohol, and beating children over the head all can cause long-term/permanent damage, and risk death. The sleep spell does no such thing, and is in fact harmless if nobody capitalizes on the helplessness it entails. I'm pretty sure nearly every modern parent has done some version of "let's give Billy some benadryl before bed tonight." Not something you want to overdo, lest it interfere with ability to sleep on their own (and that WOULD be an interesting character quirk: "Mom cast sleep on my every night for years; now I can't sleep without it."), but unless you add drawbacks not present in the text like that, using sleep on your kid at night wouldn't be child abuse.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wikipedia
    Benadryl: The product is not recommended for use in children under the age of six where it has caused fatalities.
    ... But in general you are thinking of a concrete sleep spell from an RPG. That may not have a side effect per the rules, but we are talking about a hypothetical "real" world which tends to be more complex than an RPG, so a sleep spell may very weill have a side effect there. I don't think that a rule like "if you cast this spell on the same target more than 1/week for more than three months, side effect X will happen" will improve any roleplaying game, so I am happy that such rules are not present (at least in the games I play).

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Similar consideration for truth magic: Yes, you could cast a truth detection spell on your kid, but would it not teach them that you don't trust them? Compare that to putting a GPS tracker on your child, same kind of consideration.
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    This is a silly one, though. "I can't doubt my kid's word; that would mean I don't trust him!" So you'd never check to see if the toothbrush is damp after he claims he brushed his teeth, or examine his hands after he claimed to wash them, or ask to see his completed homework after he claimed to have done it, or look at his report card rather than just asking him what he got in his classes?

    Kids lie. It's one of many behaviors they engage in to avoid things they don't want to do/have happen (e.g. getting in trouble).

    The use of truth spells would be one of those things that's just part of your tool kit as a parent. You want the child to value honesty in its own right, so you extend trust when they earn it, but there's no point in refraining from its use when you deem it important that you know whether your child is being truthful.
    Oh, I did not mean to say that I would believe my kid's every word. Children (and adults) lie, and I do not see that as a problem in itself. Of course, it depends on what they lie about. In my opinion to have the option of lying is very important, if only to learn the societal function of lying ("I'm fine", "Good job, Bob", "Nice to see you", ...). I can not imagine many situations in which the truth is really important, and I would hope that the relationship with my child is such that it would not lie in these situations. This may actually be influenced by using truth magic, if this is usually used in situations where the (enforced) telling of the truth is followed by punishment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Frankly, I don't see a problem with a GPS tracker, either. Ideally, one that can be turned off for privacy reasons. But when they're young, knowing where they are is a safety feature. Letting them have control over it later on, as they get older, is one of those rites of passage, equivalent to modern-day letting the kid go off on his own rather than needing to constantly have a parent or babysitter or similar authority with them at all times.
    I will have to disagree on that one. It's not relevant to this thread, so I will leave it at that.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    This. I remember a setting (I don't know if it was official or homebrew) where magic was disallowed in judicial processes exactly due to this unreliability. Add in the possibilities to magically protect yourself from truth magic, plus the possibilities to hide that you are using magic at all, and magic does not change much about crime.
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    The biggest reason to disallow such magics in judicial process - at least legitimate ones, rather than "har har I criminal want get away with things" - is if the unreliability means that you get false positives.

    As an example, if "truth spells" work by telling the caster if the target is lying, the question can be raised as to whether the caster is telling the truth, himself. Godfather Giolious has bribed, extorted, or blackmailed the Court Spellcaster into claiming that Fighter Bob is lying when he says he personally saw Giolious and his men murder Bob's father. Further, when Bob is asked if he killed his own father to inherit the magic sword he now wields, the Court Spellcaster claims Bob is lying when he denies it!

    Sure, the Court Spellcaster knows that Bob didn't lie once while under the spell, but who're you going to believe, the Court Spellcaster, who is an Officer of the Court, or Bob who has just been revealed to be a liar and a murderer?
    Good points there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    This is an especially scary example. Basically you are saying: If I cast truth detection on someone and they say they are not guilty, they must be lying and have passed their will save. On the other side, if they say they are guilty under a spell they could claim that the spell was not actually a detection but a coercion spell. Who could prove otherwise? And finally they may have passed the will save and have lied (saying they are guilty) to protect someone else.
    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    All of these are further reasons why such magics would not be considered definitive.

    I doubt they'd be "inadmissible," except by precedent of how easily challenged they are, though. In other worse, less likely to be inadmissable by virtue of violating rights, and more likely to be inadmissable in practice by virtue of the fact that they almost never actually help come to a conclusion and they cost money that the prosecutor doesn't want to have to justify.

    I imagine, though, that if the caster can sense whether the save was made or not, spells like zone of truth would be something that a defendent could ask to have a private meeting (with his lawyer present) with the prosecutor to attempt to short-circuit a case.

    [...]

    Essentially, if the accused really is innocent, and the DA is on the up-and-up, such pre-trial meetings could save both sides a lot of time and hassle.

    "I didn't do it. I don't know who did it. I didn't arrange for it to be done, and to my knowledge I am not in any way complicit in the crime being investigated." Provided the truth-detector knows he didn't make his save, that's a pretty exonnerating statement, and unlikely to trip him up by making him unable to say it due to complicity in other crimes not in question.
    All this depends very much on both the exact function and the reliability of the magical truth detection. A reliable "lie detector" would likely have good uses, a non-reliable one or a "truth enforcer" may cause more problems than it solves.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid
    Gen Hex
    Nice one, Aliquid

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    I've always had issue with "lie detector" spells where the caster can't tell if the target made his save. Being otherwise immune is also a problem, but sufficiently rare that it can be handled.

    However, even if you can't tell if they made their save, you can hedge your bets. Cast the spell numerous times. Minimum 20, preferably 40 to a hundred. Ask ths same battery of questions each time. Subject him to dispel magic before every time.

    Sure, if he's got magic that protects him, dispel magic won't work everytime. Sure, if he's trying to make his save, he'll make it some percentage of the time. But do it often enough, and ask the same battery of questions each time, and if he's lying about any of them, it will come out eventually. The odds that he'll fail his save and have any protective magics negated on the same trial run increase with each repetition.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by King of Nowhere View Post
    actually my take is a bit different. what i'm saying is that once somebody can use magic to cover his tracks on a crime scene, then not using magic is not really an option. sure, magic can be fooled by other magic, but mundane means can be fooled much more easily. the only possibility is to use more powerful magic and escalate, and hope it's enough.
    Oh, I agree. I was just saying that my original take was that magic could make crime fighting easier, and your posts made me realize that it wouldn't... sure, it would make some things easier while other things would be harder. Overall, crime fighting would require magic, but overall it would still be very complicated and challenging, just for very different reasons than for us.

    Quote Originally Posted by Firest Kathon View Post
    Nice one, Aliquid
    Nice, but I can't take credit. Jay R posted it first.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    You start out made of ice and already adult and identical to some creature you absolutely want to kill for some reason but you always obey the orders of your spell-casting parent.
    Or you are some random object or a bunch of sand with free will but with also a lot of innate knowledge for some reason and you start friendly toward your parent.
    Last edited by noob; 2019-11-19 at 06:29 PM.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    But overall at a society level things would have an impact. Boomers are quite different than Millennials, partially because of the different technology when the were young. Not ALL boomers, and not ALL Millenials behave the same, but the overall culture is different when you have a group of people.

    So what would Gen Hex look like at a generalized level. Sure we can't know, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate.
    I agree with you completely — in one direction. Any reasonable speculation we make is a possible result. One could easily build a PC, a NPC, or even a large body of people around it.

    But we can’t reasonably assume that all children in that cohort would develop the same way. All our evidence says that children, even raised in similar backgrounds, will display a wide variety of traits and personalities.

    “A child who grew up with spellcasting parents could have trait X.” Yes.

    “Many children who grew up with spellcasting parents could have trait X.” Very likely.

    “All children who grew up with spellcasting parents must have trait X.” No.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I've always had issue with "lie detector" spells where the caster can't tell if the target made his save. Being otherwise immune is also a problem, but sufficiently rare that it can be handled.
    I think a 100% (or even 95%) foolproof method of lie detection would cause narrative problems in an RPG, which is why there is usually a way around it in the rules. If you can, with negligible effort, tell if someone tells the truth or not, then any story based on deception will not work anymore or at least will require elaborate narrative construction to explain how someone could get away with a lie.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aliquid View Post
    Nice, but I can't take credit. Jay R posted it first.
    Whoops . Sorry, Jay R. Credit goes to you then.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    However, even if you can't tell if they made their save, you can hedge your bets. Cast the spell numerous times. Minimum 20, preferably 40 to a hundred. Ask ths same battery of questions each time. Subject him to dispel magic before every time.
    That requires either dozens to hundreds of truthcasters on hand for every criminal case (which is a very optimistic assumption of the resources available for all but the most major cases), or a given one being able to sink the time and magical energy (e.g: spell slots) into any given case. Both run into manpower questions pretty quickly, while the latter also has problems with stamina and the risk that the truthcaster has been compromised.

    A simple purse snatching probably doesn't warrant anything more than the simplest of truth spells, and even that assumes a certain prevalence of applicable casters. Corruption at the highest echelons of government will have many more resources available, but also many more resources available to protect the guilty and/or corrupt the process. (One PRC with an innate immunity to truth detection spells leaves the entire process boned, and similarly a process that assumes that only an innocent man could successfully make hundreds of saves to keep asserting their innocence is vulnerable to an effect that causes lie detectors to return a false positive.) Magic will be a tool, but not one you should put all your hopes on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    But we can’t reasonably assume that all children in that cohort would develop the same way. All our evidence says that children, even raised in similar backgrounds, will display a wide variety of traits and personalities.

    “A child who grew up with spellcasting parents could have trait X.” Yes.

    “Many children who grew up with spellcasting parents could have trait X.” Very likely.

    “All children who grew up with spellcasting parents must have trait X.” No.
    "Children who grew up with spellcasting parents are much more likely than their muggle peers to display trait X." Pertinent, and indeed the crux of this thread.

    Although getting back to my earlier post here, what we mean by "spellcasting" is key here. A D&D wizard is constrained by spell slots, a superhero generally only has one shtick at their disposal, a cthulu mythos caster's children are likely to start as inhuman abominations, etc. Throw in the question of how heritable magic is - asking about the effects of being raised by a spellcaster might be swamped by the effects of growing up as a spellcaster in a magic infused world - and the question becomes hard to answer without constraints.

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    Default Re: Growing up with a spellcasting parent

    I except that like for most jobs having a parent with job X increase a bit the odds of having job X.

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