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Maelynn
2018-05-04, 05:05 AM
As a new DM, I've been working on my own setting. Most of it will be the standard, but with one important change. You see, one of the things I've always found odd in D&D is that there's magic in abundance and yet the everyday world is very medieval and rather primitive. I have a bit of a hard time believing there's nobody who ever said, 'why not put some of this magic to good use, so that the people can benefit from it?'

So for my own setting, I decided that some people have done just that. The City Council of Salinport has devised a set of legislations around the use of magic, making it more readily available for the benefit of the economy and the people. I've written up a more detailed explanation of this legislation, along with an overview of the ranks and some examples of how it's used in everyday life. I decided to copy this into a Google Docs file, so that I can share it here and hopefully get some feedback.

Mundane Magic (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1poPSzN6Dob-X87KT-coPzQjtuAUXn4Pb10IvJq6aEWQ/edit?usp=sharing)

Please, if you can be bothered to give this a read, tell me what you think of it. Have I dropped the ball somewhere? Is there something that could greatly improve upon this system? Or have I pretty much nailed it? Any advice is helpful for this Little Perfectionist Rookie DM. :smallredface:

Oh, and I should also clarify D.E.U.S - it's an institute that serves as some sort of quest hub. I'll spare you the full description, but suffice it to say that the party is under employ and is sent out on quests through this institute. At level 4, they'll have rank 4. By the time they reach level 7, they'll be promoted to rank 5.

Fire Tarrasque
2018-05-04, 06:20 AM
Seems good. The example about Sleep might not be phenomenal, as you'd have to use it consistently. Theres also the issue of you can lie in a Zone of Truth, it's just a saving throw. I believe the Necromancy thing is about something like Animate Dead, Create Undead, or Finger of Death, but theres nothing like that up until third level spells, and they are also incidentally banning things like Revifiy, Reincarnation, or other spells that resurrect you as you, not a zombie.
And if magic is so prevalent, there'd logically be some kind of magic underground, right? At the very least, someone willing to cast Invisibility on someone wanting to sneak past the watch.

Maelynn
2018-05-04, 08:13 AM
The example about Sleep might not be phenomenal, as you'd have to use it consistently.

I concur. I insisted on giving 3 examples here, but couldn't come up with the last one so I put that one down just to have something. I replaced it with a more reasonable one - using Comprehend Languages to help translate a book.


Theres also the issue of you can lie in a Zone of Truth, it's just a saving throw.

True, but the caster of the zone knows if you succeeded. If you're going to testify inside the zone, you'll have to willingly fail that saving throw for your statements to have any credibility.


I believe the Necromancy thing is about something like Animate Dead, Create Undead, or Finger of Death, but theres nothing like that up until third level spells, and they are also incidentally banning things like Revifiy, Reincarnation, or other spells that resurrect you as you, not a zombie.

Hence the possibility of exemptions, such as the example of Revifify. As for the rest, well the higher-level necromancy spells require a high rank anyway and by then the restriction is lifted. It only targets the cantrips and 1st-level spells, where I didn't see any beneficial ones except Spare the Dying. And then it's easier to just ban an entire school at the lower levels and have 1 spell exempted.


And if magic is so prevalent, there'd logically be some kind of magic underground, right? At the very least, someone willing to cast Invisibility on someone wanting to sneak past the watch.

Yes! That sort of thing always makes for a nice angle to create quests/NPCs from. I actually have a plot set up where a vengeful Wild Magic Sorcerer wants to 'make a statement' regarding these laws and plants an artifact in the centre of the city, emitting a huge anti-magic field that spans the entire city.

Fire Tarrasque
2018-05-04, 02:44 PM
Your example was Spare the Dying, cantrip.

My point about the Necromancy ban: The only non damaging Necromancy spell that's third or below is Spare the Dying and False Life, both helpful, beneficial spells. The damage ban stops all the spooky-booky Necromancy spells.

Argothair
2018-05-04, 03:11 PM
So I very much like the idea of trying to figure out how magic would change the lives of ordinary people in a town or a city-state. It seems like over half of your post is about the restrictions and regulations that would be placed on mundane magic and who is licensed to get around those restrictions. That stuff is important, but it doesn't strike me as the most important or the most interesting part of your system.

I think the most important open question is whether the rest of the country is still at a medieval tech level. In other words, is it just this one town that's realized it can apply magic to mundane problems? Or, outside of the wilderness, is everybody doing it?

IF MAGIC IS IN ALL TOWNS:

1) Is there a massive population boom? What's that doing to real estate prices? Do the landed nobles care?
2) Is anyone doing any kind of scientific research into how magic works? If so, does that result in new spells / new spell applications?
3) Is anyone doing any mundane scientific research, e.g. chemistry/biology/physics? If so, is an industrial revolution on the horizon?
4) Are there still monsters and evil goblins wandering the wilderness? If so, why are they tolerated? If not, where do random encounters come from?
5) Is there still a role for non-casters to play in the economy? Like, if you can make a day's food for your family with Goodberry and you can make it smell amazing using Minor Illusion, why bother scratching in the dirt for six months to grow a crop of wheat that you can turn into acceptable porridge?
6) Is there any way to increase the fraction of your population that has magical powers? If so, how? What are the side effects on society of that kind of eugenics / education?

IF MAGIC IS JUST IN YOUR TOWN:

1) Is your town rapidly expanding at the expense of its neighbors because you have better nutrition, medicine, and sanitation? If not, why not? If so, how are the neighbors responding?
2) Is the town governed directly by a council of the most powerful magic-users? If not, why not? If so, will the party become the new overlords as soon as they level up and get stronger magic?
3) How often do registered magic users actually screw up and hurt their neighbors? What kind of compensation is available / enforced?
4) Are people trying to move into your town so they can have the benefits of mundane magic? If not, why not? If so, do they usually arrive safely? Are they welcomed?
5) Does your town have an unusually high or low proportion of spellcasters compared to other towns? Why or why not? What do spellcasters in other towns do instead of casting mundane magic?

Maelynn
2018-05-04, 05:18 PM
Your example was Spare the Dying, cantrip.

My point about the Necromancy ban: The only non damaging Necromancy spell that's third or below is Spare the Dying and False Life, both helpful, beneficial spells. The damage ban stops all the spooky-booky Necromancy spells.

Ah, I get your point now - you mean that with the 'non-damaging spell' restriction, it's redundant to also ban necromancy as a whole. Well, the most important reason for that distinction is Cause Fear. It's not damaging in the literal sense, yet it can cause mayhem.

Maelynn
2018-05-04, 05:38 PM
I think the most important open question is whether the rest of the country is still at a medieval tech level. In other words, is it just this one town that's realized it can apply magic to mundane problems? Or, outside of the wilderness, is everybody doing it?

Well, the idea is that only this city has this kind of legislation in place. The rest of the world is just like your average D&D setting, where standard rules apply.


IF MAGIC IS JUST IN YOUR TOWN:

1) Is your town rapidly expanding at the expense of its neighbors because you have better nutrition, medicine, and sanitation? If not, why not? If so, how are the neighbors responding?
2) Is the town governed directly by a council of the most powerful magic-users? If not, why not? If so, will the party become the new overlords as soon as they level up and get stronger magic?
3) How often do registered magic users actually screw up and hurt their neighbors? What kind of compensation is available / enforced?
4) Are people trying to move into your town so they can have the benefits of mundane magic? If not, why not? If so, do they usually arrive safely? Are they welcomed?
5) Does your town have an unusually high or low proportion of spellcasters compared to other towns? Why or why not? What do spellcasters in other towns do instead of casting mundane magic?

Oh, very interesting questions. This gives me a lot to think about, thank you. Let's see if I can come up with decent answers.

1) not at the neighbours' expense. It wouldn't expand much more than any thriving large city in a Medieval setting would, because of several reasons. First off, there isn't enough housing options. Second, magic is still something that has the potential to scare people. If you've grown used to it, or if you're open-minded, then it can be a great addition to your normal life. However, there are plenty of people who are wary of magic and don't want it meddling in their lives. Compare it a bit to how some people look at all that newfangled digital tech stuff. They refuse to learn how to use a computer, they have an old Nokia as a cell phone, they insist on handling all their administration on paper.

2) no, the Council is made up of a variety of people. There are several important factions in the city (mages, merchants, temples, nobles, etc) that have a great interest in politics, so a Council entirely compiled of Mages would meet with a lot of resistance.

3) it happens, that's true. Same as how in our world, you can mess up and hurt someone. There's liability and compensation just as we would have here, and if the violation is severe enough then compensation might not prove to be sufficient and the perpetrator will have to suffer a punishment as well. That's for the Bureau for LMU to determine and meet out.

4) hm, this overlaps a bit with my answer to #1. I suppose that those who would want to move into town are welcome to do so, provided they can find housing and have the means to pay for it. I'm not sure what you mean by arriving safely, so I could say that their journey will go very much the same way as in a regular setting - join a caravan, hope it's guarded well enough to keep away highwaymen.

5) this question is difficult to answer unless you lay down rules on what makes someone a spellcaster. If you learn how to cast 1 spell, or maybe just 3-4, does that make you a spellcaster? Or are you just a regular bloke who is able to pull off some specific magic? I think there will be plenty of people (mostly those in the merchant/service business) who aren't spellcasters, but just happen to know a few spells that they can use to do their job (I'm thinking of courses being available that teach you 1 spell - you can take several courses, as long as they fall within your rank or you get exemption for them). Comparable to how learning how to fire a gun doesn't make you a sharpshooter. As for what they do in other cities, well that's the standard setting again. Those people do what they always do in D&D. :p

Argothair
2018-05-04, 06:36 PM
Some very interesting answers, thank you! You've got me thinking, too.

I guess in "normal D&D" there is kind of a wink-wink nudge-nudge thing happening where none of the NPCs think to apply magic to mundane tasks, and everyone else pretends that this is normal. It's a kind of suspension of disbelief -- it doesn't make sense, but it's fine as long as you don't look too closely, and everyone agrees not to look too closely so that the usual fun D&D adventures can proceed as planned.

If you break these rules for exactly one city, that tends to shatter the suspension of disbelief. Instead of saying "well, that's just not how magic works" then everybody at the table starts saying "Wait a minute, magic works just fine on farms and mines and guilds over here, so how come it doesn't work like that anywhere else?"

And I guess your answer is that most commoners are terrified of magic, and this city council thing, unique among other city governments, has figured out how to manage and apply a practical set of magic regulations that make people feel safe around magic, in a good way.

And that's fine! That makes sense as far as it goes. Magic would be pretty scary. I could quibble about whether magic is really scarier than being eaten by wolves and sickened with plague and freezing to death in the winter and all the other mundane medieval mishaps, but I think your answer restores our ability to suspend disbelief. Yes, it's a little strange that people are so afraid of unregulated magic, but no stranger than the fact that magic works *at all*. We can accept it as part of the story in order to have fun.

I'm not sure why you imagine your city as having a housing shortage -- are there strict zoning laws? Is the city in the middle of a sandy desert where there isn't enough wood or clay or stone to go around? Did somebody build a really heavy, really useful set of city walls that are both too small and unusually difficult to move? Housing isn't that hard to build, usually -- if your economy is doing reasonably well, then people should be able to afford to build lots of new homes. During a medieval or renaissance time period, even the middle class might be willing to live in huts made of mud bricks and thatched straw roofs, especially if they can get an Unseen Servant to keep the huts clean for them.

Anymage
2018-05-04, 10:30 PM
Have you looked into other settings? Eberron is big on industrialized magic, while planescape is about high fantasy all over the place. And then, of course, there's the tippyverse.

Because while D&D magic has to be treated as a predictable technology (because unpredictable rules tend to cause frustration at the table), magic as accessible technology tends to shatter a lot of popular fantasy tropes. There are reasons that many people prefer to stick with the tropes and handwave the changes that magic would cause.

If you want to go all in on this, ask yourself how far you want to go. For instance, magic can easily replicate the communications technology that many modern, centralized governments rely on. LMU could have a much broader reach. I mean, you could certainly decide that the magical renaissance is starting in this one town and will spread out from there. But this is a change that is happening to your world. Not a state of affairs that can remain the same over long campaign time.

JBiddles
2018-05-05, 10:39 AM
I love this kind of thing. It's one of the most interesting parts of worldbuilding for me.

I would question not allowing commoners to use cantrips if they can. Just Prestidigitation alone solves the problem of sanitation, which is a huge issue for pre-industrial cities. Also, is there any reason the rest of the world isn't doing this? There's nothing wrong with just saying "they are" and having a less mediaeval world, like I do, or alternatively you could go for a kind of magic-Wakanda image in which this is the only city that has enough spellcasters (because of its wealth/literacy programmes/whatever).

That said, if you're not careful, magic can make the world completely unrecognisable. Teleportation Circle is the worst offender here. A 5th level spell that can establish permanent instant long-distance travel? No. Just no. That's an Epic Spell, if it even exists.

Personally, I aim for a sort of Discworld-like technology level as the sweet spot where swords and horses and bows still exist, but magic establishes a society far removed from the mediaeval.

Finally, DnD 5e is very low-magic by default, and one of the problems you may run into is balance. If 8th-level spells like Control Weather are available to the government, can players buy or commission the magic items they want off spellcasters? The answer in previous editions was "yes, of course"; the game was balanced around the players being able to get hold of magic items. Some DMs don't like this idea; others (like me!) think it's awesome. You may have to scale up the odd encounter, though. Also: magic runs both ways. If your players can climb the keep walls with Spider Climb, the nobleman can have runes of Grease inscribed on it for just such an occasion.

Maelynn
2018-05-05, 04:50 PM
I'm not sure why you imagine your city as having a housing shortage -- are there strict zoning laws? Is the city in the middle of a sandy desert where there isn't enough wood or clay or stone to go around? Did somebody build a really heavy, really useful set of city walls that are both too small and unusually difficult to move? Housing isn't that hard to build, usually -- if your economy is doing reasonably well, then people should be able to afford to build lots of new homes. During a medieval or renaissance time period, even the middle class might be willing to live in huts made of mud bricks and thatched straw roofs, especially if they can get an Unseen Servant to keep the huts clean for them.

Ah, I didn't say there was a shortage - only that there aren't enough housing options. Not enough to expand at a higher rate than normal, that is. Surely there's room for new people, just not for everybody who'd want to come live there. Secretly I think the Builders' Hall is content to keep it that way... perhaps encouraged by the Council. ;)


If you want to go all in on this, ask yourself how far you want to go. For instance, magic can easily replicate the communications technology that many modern, centralized governments rely on. LMU could have a much broader reach. I mean, you could certainly decide that the magical renaissance is starting in this one town and will spread out from there. But this is a change that is happening to your world. Not a state of affairs that can remain the same over long campaign time.

I do want to keep it limited. Usually progress is made by invention, by doing the unknown, by being very creative and toeing the existing boundaries. In Salinport they're more focused on making life as it is a bit easier, nothing more. The Bureau is therefore rather bureaucratic (ha!) about it, as new inventions on how to use magic will fall under heavy scrutiny, have to be inspected carefully, and it can easily take several months before they decide if it can be allowed. Compare this to passing a new legislation in a city, or even a country - so tedious!
I'd say this puts enough of a damper on things to stop this from becoming a revolution, or from causing changes too fast. But I do agree with you that change will happen, eventually.

Maelynn
2018-05-05, 05:03 PM
I would question not allowing commoners to use cantrips if they can. Just Prestidigitation alone solves the problem of sanitation, which is a huge issue for pre-industrial cities.

I understand, but I want to keep it heavily regulated for a reason. If every Tom/****/Harry has access, then it's far easier to misuse. I'd like to think along the lines of decent gun laws (not the US ones, but EU ones), where normal people don't get a gun - only those who serve in a position where they need it or can put it to good use (police, army, etc). Or medication, which also isn't readibly available over the counter but requires a prescription by someone who is trusted with this responsibility. Magic is equally powerful and should therefore not be easily accessible by the people.


Also, is there any reason the rest of the world isn't doing this? There's nothing wrong with just saying "they are" and having a less mediaeval world, like I do, or alternatively you could go for a kind of magic-Wakanda image in which this is the only city that has enough spellcasters (because of its wealth/literacy programmes/whatever).

There can be many reasons. One I already stated in an earlier post, about many people being wary of magic use the way some people in our world are wary of technology. Also, just because it seems to work in one city doesn't mean it'd go well everywhere. Thay runs on slavery, something no other nation would follow - but it seems to work out for them just fine. Damara is a kingdom ruled by a single person, rather than a democracy ruled by a balanced council - but it seems to work out for them just fine. With those examples, Salinport could easily have taken this magic use direction where others are not willing (or able) to follow.


That said, if you're not careful, magic can make the world completely unrecognisable. Teleportation Circle is the worst offender here. A 5th level spell that can establish permanent instant long-distance travel? No. Just no. That's an Epic Spell, if it even exists.

God yes, I do want to avoid that. Hence the heavy regulation and the high-level spells being restricted to a select few. Even those with enough money to pay the fee will still have to submit themselves to a thorough investigation to obtain a certificate of conduct - and since the Bureau for LMU handles these things, you can bet they're going to be very strict.

theshadowcult
2018-05-08, 07:03 AM
Firstly i want to point out that no where in the books does it say everyone lives a mundane life and they do not use magic on an every day scale. That is simply an impression everyone gets because it is a sort of medieval fantasy game. So it is entirely up to the dm and how they see the world.

Secondly, i'd like to see a world built where your design was common in all settlements to varying degree based on whether they are villages or sprawling metropolises. Would be an interesting world to play in. Especially when adventuring in those said cities, and having the magic users restricted in what they can do, or risk breaking the law and becoming outlaws.

DiBastet
2018-05-11, 10:10 PM
Secondly, i'd like to see a world built where your design was common in all settlements to varying degree based on whether they are villages or sprawling metropolises. Would be an interesting world to play in.

Well, it's called Eberron, and it's an official setting. Not only it does that sufficient advanced magic thing, but it also tries very hard to subvert lots of other tropes common to classic D&D settings. In eberron halflings are badass dinosaur outriders, elves are either creepy necromancers or roving marauders looking for a fight, drow are jungle folk with a focus on scorpions instead of spiders, orcs are druidic protectors of reality, hobgoblins had the most amazing empire once, gnomes are not funny and dwarves are mafia-like bankers. And yes, it is amazing.